The Eagle, by Tennyson

[Harlen]

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.


Alfred Lord Tennyson

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I loved this poem the first time I read it, and it's so easily memorized that it has stayed with me for probably forty five years. I've been lucky enough to see quite a few eagles, especially when spending summers traveling and working on the coast of south-eastern and southern AK. I was reminded of the feeling eagles can give us by the words of Paul- our "commonloon.":

Whenever I see an Eagle in the backcountry, it's always very spiritual.