Gökhan Nedim GÜNAL
20193310024/Morning
İDE160 Poetry and Drama Analysis
Dr. Emine ŞENTÜRK
April, 22th 2020
AN ANALYSIS OF ‘’THE EAGLE’’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson
First Impressions ;
First off, our poet is Victorian time artist who was born in the beginning of 19th century. He
has style of medievalism and bears potent visual imagery which can also be seen in this poem
we will analyse. Romanticism is visible in his work and especially in this poem, admiration of
nature and using eagle as symbol of freedom resembles us individualism rather than
conformist point of view.
At first glance poem is pretty straight-forward, it’s about an eagle which is flying around thus
it gives us the impression of freedom as main theme. Bunch of personifications are used for
pen-portraiting the surroundings and making us live the moment which is short and sharp just
like the poem. We can also feel the poet’s admiration towards nature, especially eagles, for
example in first stanza he remarks it’s strength and also in second stanza he remarks it’s speed
and sight. (He clasps the crag with crooked hands, He watches from his mountain walls, And
like a thunderbolt he falls. )
The poetic devices used in this poem are:
1. We can see two stanzas, each of them consists of tree rhymic lines of iambic
pentameter. We can say these as ‘triplets’
2. There is no refrain that we can see, But we can see a pattern here as lands, stands, crowls,
walls, falls. All of those are part of rhyming
Some of the figures of speech that are used in this poem are as follows:
1. ‘Lonely Lands’ as personification, this is more or less self-explanatory and we can see
the same figure of speech in ‘the wrinkled sea beneath him crawls’( we are talking about
Victorian times so it’s predictable to see the writer imagine eagle as male and gives it
attributes like free and mighty) crawling is something only animals and humans can do
so we can count it as personification too. Eagle obviously doesn’t have hands but writer
used personification here for making the animal more than what it is and bring much
more meaning to the context.
2. Alliteration used several times ‘clasps‘, ‘crag’, ‘crooked‘ (c sound in particular) which
makes us pause when we read the poem and also creates a melody.
3. ‘ Close to sun’ is an exaggration we can quickly grasp, what we are looking at is
hyperbole here. If we go into details as meaning wise, we can see the same pattern here
as I stated in the first part. No animal or human can be so close to sun but here eagle
clearly can which makes it unique. And also he goes on and claiming as it’s on top of the
world clinging to the crag, in here we can see the might and courage eagle bears in itself
and uses ‘crag’ as dangers of being on top of the food chain. So let’s analyse it as a
whole ; ‘ Close to sun in lonely lands’ it almost making the eagle godlike if we think
about it.
4. Imagery can be seen clearly in first stanza. ‘Azure world’ gives clue of surroundings that
poet wanted to portray.
5. Poet goes on transfiguring eagle even more just like he has obsession or even fetish
towards it and implies the latter having the mountains as it’s own. This is clearly another
case of hyperbole and also personification as eagle owns something with concious.
6. Simile can be seen in second stanza as ‘like a thunderbolt’
7. ‘The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls’ also has another meaning as Metaphor, if we
delve into details ‘wrinkled sea’ symbolizes being old and fragile and it continues with
‘crawls’ which consolidates the meaning even further. In another perspective we can
interpret the line as Euphemism which basically sugar-coates the real meaning.
8. There can be multiple interpretation about the last line of second stanza but as our first
go we can mark ‘and like a thunderbolt he falls’ as Conceit. Falling like a thunderbolt is
certainly a far-fetched and much elaborated use of words, the poet uses personifications
and imageries to make reader immersed and finishes the poem in surprising way.
9. Continuing with the latter, ‘like a thunderbolt he falls’ has second meaning which is
nonetheless negative than what we could think at first glace. It basically symbolizes
sudden death which is a concept that phrased in various works of art as powerful beings
die suddenly without warning.
Final Impressions :
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After reading the poem, it brings so many imagination on the table. Even though it’s a
short one, it becomes something we can interpret in many ways with rich figures of
speeches. Intertwining power and solitude in a deep and lush understanding with sudden
climax&unexpected cliff hanger fashion of ending makes an rookie reader awe in power
of words. It’s easy to read but harder to grasp completely.