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Tennyson's Poems

The Eagle


First published in 1851. It has not been altered.


He clasps the crag with hooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.


The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; [1]

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.


[Footnote 1: One of Tennyson's most magically descriptive lines; nothing] could exceed the vividness of the words "wrinkled" and "crawls" here.

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