Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
The Eagle
HE clasps the crag with crooked 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.
Questions for “The Eagle”
1. What impression of the eagle does this poem produce? What is the eagle’s nature?
2. Find and quote the simile in the second stanza.
3. Create a mocking imitation of this poem (2 triplet stanzas) on the subject of another,
less impressive animal (a chicken? A worm? Please yourself)
Questions for “Hawk Roosting”
1. Who is the speaker of this poem?
2. What is the speaker’s personality? Describe it in a paragraph of 5 sentences, using
quotes to support your description.
3. Another form of figurative/poetic language is the use of exaggeration or hyperbole.
Find an example of hyperbole in the poem and quote it.
4. What does the word “sophistry” (line 15) mean (give the dictionary definition)?
What do lines 15 and 16 mean in context?
5. Do a VENN diagram comparing this poem and “The Eagle”.
Hawk Roosting (Ted Hughes, 1930)
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.