The Eagle

The poem is a lyric poem, since it’s short and represents a personal perspective on an eagle. It’s also something of a dramatic poem, as the presentation of the eagle is quite cinematic. The eagle is, more or less, the star of the poem, but they’re not the speaker. They’re separate entities, and the speaker functions as a narrator; they tell about the eagle, where he is, and what he does. The speaker doesn’t have a specific identity. It’s as if the speaker wants anonymity or to rid themselves of any identity. In the context of Imagism, the speaker is less of a person and more of a lens. They’re like a camera capturing the eagle in the mountains. The speaker is a medium that brings the eagle to the reader.

To match the power and force of the eagle, the speaker uses an urgent and sharp tone. Their voice is swift and cutting, and the speaker doesn’t wait to get to the action. The poem begins with the eagle in motion: “He clasps the crag with crooked hands” (Line 1). The diction, the words Tennyson chooses, further the sharp tone—“clasps,” “crag,” and “crooked” make jagged sounds. The alliteration adds to the urgency and rapidity. Tennyson puts words with the same first letter or similar sounds near one another to create connected sounds that sweep the reader along.

The tone becomes somewhat melancholy when the speaker describes the eagle as “[c]lose to the sun in lonely lands” (Line 2). The eagle doesn’t have company—no friends or romantic partners. He’s an isolated creature, but he’s powerful, and the proximity to the sun reinforces his authority and the theme of power. It’s as if the eagle is as high and mighty as the sun or has the strength to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the sun. Instead of the world revolving around the sun, it revolves around the eagle. In a historical context, the sun might allude to Louis XIV. He was the King of France from 1643 to 1715, and he gave himself the nickname “the Sun God.”

Up in the sky and near the sun, the eagle becomes “[r]ing’d with the azure world” (Line 3). The ring advances the majestical tone and the theme of power. The speaker gives the eagle a crown; his crown isn’t made of diamonds or gold but the “azure world” or the cloudless blue sky. The eagle embraces his godly, royal traits: He proudly “stands” (Line 3). Tennyson’s picture of the eagle relies on anthropomorphism. The poem gives the eagle human characteristics. He has “hands” (Line 1), and he “stands.” The presence of anthropomorphism lends credence to claims that the eagle is a symbol, so he represents something about the human world—power, force, vulnerability, or something else.

Tennyson compares or juxtaposes the stately eagle with the “wrinkled sea” that “beneath him crawls” (Line 4). The sea is literally and symbolically below the eagle. They have a lowly status. They don’t stand tall on a mountain but crawl, and crawling doesn’t link to a powerful symbol—it’s not the most forceful of movements. The wrinkles make the sea seem dirty, not crisp, or used. It’s like the sea is a shirt that could use a thorough washing and ironing.

Concerning the themes of power and force—the sea becomes the eagle’s royal subjects. They’re the regular people. They’re common, so there’s no need to differentiate one from another: It's acceptable to leave them as a mass of enfeebled wrinkles. At the same time, the sea isn’t motionless. It’s still moving. The eagle isn’t a part of it, and he doesn’t have explicit control over it. The eagle is higher than the sea, but that doesn’t mean that the sea can’t bring it down the way that Jose Maria Torrijos y Uriarte tried to topple King Ferdinand VII.

The sea captivates the eagle, and “[h]e watches [it] from his mountain walls” (Line 5), so the line has an ironic tone. The speaker watches the eagle, and the eagle watches the sea. The speaker also watches the sea; if they weren’t, they couldn’t describe it. The eagle and the speaker remain separate, but for a moment, it’s like they become the same. The eagle explicitly fills the emptiness of the speaker, and they become one watcher or camera lens.

The diction continues to support the sharp tone and the theme of power. The “mountains walls” are “his” (Line 5). They belong to the eagle, so they’re like his kingdom. The eagle dominates the mountain region. It’s his territory, so he’s in charge. Then again, “like a thunderbolt he falls” (Line 6), so perhaps the eagle doesn’t reign supreme. Someone or something topples him. In Greek mythology, Zeus’s go-to weapon was a thunderbolt, so maybe Zeus, or a godlike figure, knocked down the eagle to remind him that he is just an eagle and not a god or a king. Now, he “falls” (Line 6) into the “wrinkled sea” (Line 4), and the tone is odious. The sea can eradicate his singular identity and consume him. If the sea represents the general populous, they can get some payback on the highfalutin bird.

Conversely, the poem may be reinforcing the bird's power. The eagle is “like a thunderbolt” (Line 6), so he strikes like Zeus or a powerful god. He’s not a victim of an attack; instead, he’s the one on the attack. After contemplating the sea, the eagle figures out a plan of attack, and by the end of the poem, the eagle puts his plan into practice. The strident tone relates to the historical context. Up until about midway through the 20th century, England was arguably like the eagle. It was a singular superpower that could send thunderbolts—troops and colonizers—across the globe. With this interpretation, the poems take on a patriotic tone, with the forceful eagle symbolizing the unrivaled hegemony of Tennyson’s country, England.