(142) (143) (144) (145) (146) (147) It was upon the eagle's plundered store That Wallace fed, when haunted from his home. For by his name my verse shall be preferr'd, Borne like a lark upon this eagle's wing.-Congreve: King. There stands an eagle, at the feet Of the fair image wrought, A kingly emblem, nor unmeet To make yet deeper thought. She whose high heart finds rest below Was royal in her birth and woe.-Hemans: Women.. Some day I'll burst abroad, And take a flight, as the wild eagles do, When from the summit of some giddiest crag They plunge into the immeasurable air, -Cornwall: Poet's Reply. And that French muse's eagle eye and wing Hath soared to heav'n, and there hath learn'd the art To frame angelick strains, and canyons sing. --Phineas Fletcher: The Purple Island. Behold a vision of the days to be! (148) Cruel and eager of dominion, The mighty eagle lies with bleeding pinion, That no one pities.—Mackay: Iphianassa. Where the chieftain's spirit hovers, (149) My shield is an eagle's wing to cover the king of Dun-lora.... The eyes of Morven do not sleep, They are watchful as eagles on their mossy rocks. . . . I rush forth, on eagle's wings, to seize my beam of fame. As meet two broad-winged eagles, in their sounding strife, ... ... in winds, so rush the two chiefs on Moilena into gloomy fight. . . . Fingal is there in his strength; the eagle-wing of his helmet sounds. ... Descending like the eagle of heaven, with all his rustling wings, when he forsakes the blast, with joy the son of Trenmor came; Conar, arm of death, from Morven of the groves (Ossian: Temora). (153) (154) (155) (156) Like eagle's plumage, ruffled by the air, Veiled a sad wreck of grandeur and of grace. -Montgomery: Before the Flood. In anger valiant; gently came in Love; -Davenant: To the Queen. 1 Thus arrayed As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, False learning wanders upward more and more, -Davenant: Dying Christian. So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain, (157) (158) He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel, -Byron: On Kirke White. Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale -Shelley: Adonais. A desert peopled by the storms alone, And the wolf tracks her there.-Shelley: Mont Blanc. Her feet both thick, and eagle-like displaid. -Suckling: The Deformed Mistress. (159) (160) Vexed like a morning eagle, lost and weary -Keats: Endymion. (161) An eagle so caught, in some bursting cloud, -Shelley: Prometheus Unbound. (162) A hooded eagle, among blinking owls. Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone.-Shelley: Islam. (165) Where falling stars dart their artillery forth, And eagles struggle with the buffeting north That balances the heavy meteor-stone.-Keats: Endymion. (166) Kill an eagle when crushing an egg.—Cook: Greatness. And shrieked the night-crow from the oak, The screech-owl from the thicket broke And fluttered down the dell. So fearful was the sound, and stern, The slumbers of the full-gorged erne Were startled.-Scott: Harold the Dauntless. Where Echo slumbers.-Burns: Elegy on Henderson. (168) Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns, (169) (170) The dark-winged erne impetuous glanced to view. His aged brows are crowned with curling fern, That loves amid the stormy blast to soar, Where through disjointed cliffs the tempests roar, Climbs on strong wing the storm, and, screaming high, FALCONS.1 The falcon of the poets is a purely artificial bird, a thing of bells and hood. Indeed, there is very little positive evidence at all to show that a poet even saw a wild hawk. Scott must have known it, but you could hardly guess so from his verse; and, except for Burns, Wordsworth, 1 Not used as equivalent to the Falconida of naturalists, but only as a comprehensive term for the poets' "hawks." Grahame, and Jean Ingelow, the hawk-had it not been a bird of sport-might have found no place in our poetry. Burns, beyond doubt, had seen the "griping goshawk” (as Quarles calls it) sweeping on to its prey on the Ayrshire downs; and Grahame had certainly watched it "skim forth from the cliff, eyeing the furzy slope." Wordsworth notes "a pair of falcons, wheeling on the wing, in clamorous agitation round the crest of a tall rock, their airy citadel," and elsewhere has "Smoothly as a hawk, That, disentangled from the shady boughs Of some thick wood, her place of covert, cleaves, and sweet Jean Ingelow had often scared "the bold marshharrier" from the ducklings on the river. Of Philips, also, there may be admitted a generous doubt : "Now swifter from Plinlimmon's steepy top The stanch ger-falcon thro' the buxom air but of all the rest it is not unfair to say that the trained bird engaged their fancy so completely that they do not refer to the wild falcons at all. Very numerous, indeed, are references to doves that "cower" when they espy soaring" and "towering" hawks; and equally common are allusions to the rapidity and ferocity of falcons, but these allusions are not such as to warrant us in supposing them to be vignettes from nature. Specially mentioned by name, as birds of sport (in which aspect our poets are always, as I have already said, punctiliously exact as to species), are the goshawk, hobby, merlin, peregrine, and sparrow-hawk, with their technical sub divisions of tiercel, lanrell, coystrell, gentle, haggard, |