The Eagle
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 Tennyson
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The American Eagle
Bird of Columbia! well art thou
An emblem of our native land;
With unblenched
front and noble brow,
Among the nations doomed to stand;
Proud, like her mighty mountain woods;
Like her own rivers
wandering free;
And sending forth from hills and floods
The joyous shout of liberty!
Like thee, majestic bird!
like thee,
She stands in unbought majesty,
With spreading wings, untired and strong,
That dares a soaring far and
long,
That mounts aloft, nor looks below
And will not quail, though tempests blow.
The admiration of earth,
In
grand simplicity she stands;
Like thee, the storms beheld her birth,
And she was nursed by ragged hands;
But, pasted
the fierce and furious war,
Her rising fame new glory brings,
For kings and nobles come from far
To seek the shelter
of her wings.
And like thee, rider of the cloud,
She mounts the heavens, serene and proud,
Great in her pure and
noble fame,
Great in her spotless champion's name,
And destined in her day to be
Mighty as Rome, more nobly free.
---C.
W. Thompson
The Eagle of Freedom
0, that Eagle of Freedom! when cloud upon cloud
Swathed the sky of my own native land with a shroud,
When
lightnings gleamed fiercely, and thunderbolts rung,
How proud to the tempest those pinions were flung!
Though the wild
blast of battle rushed fierce through the air
With darkness and dread, still the eagle was there;
Unquailing, still
speeding, his swift flight was on,
Till rainbow of peace crowned the victory won.
0, that Eagle of Freedom! age
dims not his eye,
He has seen earth's mortality spring, bloom, and die!
He has seen the strong nations rise, flourish,
and fall,
He mocks at Time's changes, he triumphs o'er all;
He has seen our own land with forests o'erspread,
He
sees it with sunshine and joy on its head;
And his presence will bless this his own chosen clime,
Till the Archangel's
fiat is set upon time.
---Alfred B. Street.
The Eagle
Bird of the broad and sweeping wing
Thy home is high in heaven,
Where wide the storms their banners
fling,
And the tempest clouds are driven.
Thy throne is on the mountain top;
Thy fields---the boundless air;
And
hoary peaks that proudly prop
The skies, thy dwellings are.
And where was then thy fearless flight?
"O'er the
dark, mysterious sea,
To lands that caught the setting light,
The cradle of liberty.
There on the silent and lonely
shore,
For ages I watched alone,
And the world, in its darkness, asked no more
Where the glorious bird had flown.
"But
then came a bold and hardy few,
And they breasted the unknown wave;
I caught afar the wandering crew,
And I knew
they were high and brave.
I wheeled around the welcome bark,
As it sought the desolate shore;
And up to heaven, like
a joyous lark,
My quivering pinions bore.
"And now that bold and hardy few
Are a nation wide and strong;
And
danger and doubt I have led them through,
And they worship me in song;
And over their bright and glancing arms
On
field, and lake, and sea,
With an eye that fires, and a spell that charms,
I guide them to victory."
---James
Gates Percival |
| Poem source: Junior Instructor Book II |
SOAR WITH THE EAGLES
There's
an old fable that talks about a man who found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eagle hatched with
the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life, the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard
chicken.
He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly
a few feet in the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the
cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
The old eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked. "That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbor. "He
belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth-- we're chickens."
So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what
he thought he was.
How sad when we who are children of the King live as chickens when we could fly with the eagles.
Anonymous
Courtesy of Jim Knipp |
From an Eagle's View
Have you ever wondered what it's like
to fly free,
To see the world as far as the eye can see,
To view the surroundings from high and from low,
To hear
only the sound of a distant echo,
To float in the air with the wind being your guide,
To admire many rainbows that the
trees tend to hide,
To see the misty mornings over a beautiful mountaintop,
To glide over a flowing river that never
seems to stop,
To watch the animals from over a mile away,
Or to rise above the treetops that glisten in the day?
If
you were an eagle you would wonder no more,
For it can see things you have never seen before.
Next time you look into
the sky of blue,
Think of what it's like from an eagle's view.
© Stacy Smith
Majestic Dreams
Last
night, once again, I had a dream
About an eagle in the blue,
And just like all the other dreams,
Right above my head
it flew.
In every dream of it I had,
It landed somewhere close by,
And each time, I was so excited
For the beauty
that caught my eye.
Our national emblem gracing the sky
For so long I yearned to see,
And envied those fortunate
enough
To see him on the wing, being free.
When I awoke from the glorious dreams,
Some disappointment I did feel.
But
then I overcame with happiness,
For the dreams had seemed so real.
© Stacy Smith |
TREASURE THIS KING
He's as graceful as they come
A descendent
from above
There is no fear nor is there shame
The mountains his nest
The skies his domain
He doesn't borrow,
nor does he steal
fighting the forces of nature
to find his next meal
But he's in serious danger
with all the
power that he obtains
His life may soon end
because of senseless human gains
Please treasure this king
respect
as you may
He's the almighty eagle
of the U.S.A.
© Jerry R. Bowen
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