Works

They have him in a cage
And little children run
To offer him well-meant bits of bun,
And very common people say, "My word!
Ain't he a 'orrible bird!"
And the smart, "How absurd!...

The winds sweep by him on his mountain throne,
Hurling the clouds together at his feet,
Till Earth is hidden, lost, and swallow'd up
As in the flood of waters,--and he sits...

Nature, what heart may here by thee,
Most truly brave be styled?
The tender mother's it must be,
When struggling for her child!

A Scottish tale, of serious truth,
Will make the maxim clear,...

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,...

In search of prey once raised his pinions
An eaglet;
A huntsman's arrow came, and reft
His right wing of all motive power.
Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove,
For three long days on anguish fed,...

[1]

John Rabbit, by Dame Eagle chased,
Was making for his hole in haste,
When, on his way, he met a beetle's burrow.
I leave you all to think
If such a little chink...

The Eagle flew off with a lamb;
Then the Crow thought to lift an old ram,
In his eaglish conceit,
The wool tangled his feet,
And the shepherd laid hold of the sham.
...

Shade of Caractacus, if spirits love
The cause they fought for in their earthly home
To see the Eagle ruffled by the Dove
May soothe thy memory of the chains of Rome.
...

The eyrie clung to the shattered cliff
That the glacier's torrent thundered under;
And the unfledged eaglet's lifted eye
Looked out on the world of peak and sky
In silent wonder.
...

[1]

The eagle, through the air a queen,
And one far different, I ween,
In temper, language, thought, and mien, -
The magpie, - once a prairie cross'd.
The by-path where they met was drear,...

[1]

The eagle and the owl, resolved to cease
Their war, embraced in pledge of peace.
On faith of king, on faith of owl, they swore
That they would eat each other's chicks no more....

[12]


Aloft he guards the starry folds
Who is the brother of the star;
The bird whose joy is in the wind
Exultleth in the war.

No painted plume - a sober hue,...

[John P. Altgeld. Born Dec. 30, 1847; died March 12, 1902]


Sleep softly * * * eagle forgotten * * * under the stone.
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
...

[1]

A certain hollow tree
Was tenanted by three.
An eagle held a lofty bough,
The hollow root a wild wood sow,
A female cat between the two.
All busy with maternal labours,...

("Encore si ce banni n'e't rien aim' sur terre.")

[V, iv., August, 1832.]


Too hard Napoleon's fate! if, lone,
No being he had loved, no single one,
Less dark that doom had been....

Well sang the Bard who called the grave, in strains
Thoughtful and sad, the "narrow house." No style
Of fond sepulchral flattery can beguile
Grief of her sting; nor cheat, where he detains...

I had a passion when I was a child
For a most pleasant idleness. In June,
When the thick masses of the leaves were stirr'd
With a just audible murmur, and the streams
Fainted in their cool places to a low...

A little bird sat on the edge of her nest;
Her yellow-beaks slept as sound as tops;
Day-long she had worked almost without rest,
And had filled every one of their gibbous crops;...

The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

WHEN William went from home (a trader styled):
Six months his better half he left with child,
A simple, comely, modest, youthful dame,
Whose name was Alice; from Champaign she came....