Today I will be reading “The Eagle (A Fragment)” by Lord Alfred Tennyson.
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
The poem is about an eagle that is sitting very high in the sky before he swoops down,
presumably to catch his prey in the ocean. Although the poem is short, there are many
things to notice in it. In the first line, there is use of alliteration with the hard ‘C’ sound,
such as clasps, crag, and crooked. By having alliteration in the first line, it helps to brings
attention to the poem. There is also a metaphorical use with the phrase “crooked hands.”
Tennyson uses trochees, a stressed syllable that comes before an unstressed syllable, in
the poem, such as crooked, lonely, and azure. Assonance, which is a refrain of vowel
sounds to create internal rhyming, is used, such as “The wrinkled sEA benEAth him
crawls” and “CLOse to the sun in LOnely lands.” Notably, the last word in all the lines
rhyme in pairs of threes, like hands, lands, stands, and crawls, walls, falls. He also pairs
many one-syllable nouns with two-syllable adjectives, for example “azure world” and
“wrinkled sea.” In fact, every word in the poem has no more than two syllables except for
the world “thunderbolt,” which is meant to stand out and draw attention. The sound of
thunder is powerful, just like the eagle is projected to be a powerful animal throughout
the poem. Overall, the poem conveys the eagle has a powerful and noble animal, from
how he “clasps” the crag, which brings about the image of a strong chain link, and how
he falls like a thunderbolt. Glimpses of eagles are rare, making the title, “The Eagle (A
Fragment)” by Lord Alfred Tennyson fitting because it isn’t common seeing an eagle in
its natural habitat such as the one depicted in the poem.