Aloft he guards the starry folds
Who is the brother of the star;
The bird whose joy is in the wind
Exulteth in the war.
No painted plume—a sober hue,
His beauty is his power;
That eager calm of gaze intent
Foresees the Sibyl’s hour.
Austere, he crowns the swaying perch,
Flapped by the angry flag;
The...
the eagle, did ye see him fall?—
Aflight beyond mid-air
Erewhile his mighty pinions bore him,
His eyry left, the sun before him;
And not a bird could dare
To match with that tremendous motion,
Through fire and flood, ’twixt sky and ocean,—
But did ye see the eagle fall?
And so ye saw the eagle fall!
...
The eagle of the armies of the West,
Dying upon his alp, near to the sky,
Through the slow days that paled the imperial eye,
But could not tame the proud fire of his breast,—
Gone with the mighty pathos! Only rest
Remains where passed that struggle stern and high;
Rest, silence, broken sometimes by the cry
Of mother and eaglets round the...
A Fragment
HE clasps the crag with hookèd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
