The Eagle

(FRAGMENT)

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.]