Poety Portfolio
Sino-Canada High School English 12 Diana Wang Yaxian
Make connections with colorful lives
Especially impressive fragments
May blur the line of sight
Organize the scenes like a film
Record all the beautiful moments
Yesterday once more
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkles sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
The Eagle
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Biography
Alfred, Lord Tennyson was one of the most accomplished artists of all English poets. He was born in 1809 at Somersby in Lincolnshire. When he was five years old, he started to write poems. In 1827, Tennyson published Poems by Two Brothers with his brothers, Frederick and Charles., and he won university prizes for poetry and the Chancellor’s Gold Medal in 1828. During his study at Trinity College, Cambridge, he met one of his best friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. However, the death of Hallam shocked Tennyson profoundly that giving his inspiration to write most of his best poetry such as “Ulysses,” and “Tithonus.”
Analysis
In 1851, Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote the poem, The Eagle. This poem demonstrates the ideas and the relationship between an eagle and the natural world. The poet, Tennyson, uses a variety of literary terms and devices such as symbolism, imagery, alliteration and simile. For example, “he clasps the crag with crooked hands (line 1)” uses alliteration (clasps, crag, and crooked) that illustrates the movements of an eagle. In this sentence, the eagle is strong and powerful and it is a symbol of an old weak man that trying his best to own his treasure. The poem has a rhyme scheme with AAA BBB and it is catchy to read this poem. In addition, the effective use of imagery plays an important role in The Eagle. It describes the natural environment surrounding the eagle to reveal the characteristics of the eagle. In brief, I choose this poem because it leads me to think about the deeper meaning of this poem during I read it and makes connection between ourselves when considering the freedom and the eagle in this poem.
Reference:
Bloom, Harold. (2004). The Best Poems of the English Language. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.