Hawk Roosting and Eagle Alfred Lord Tennyson's Essay

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Hawk Roosting" and "Eagle"

Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Eagle" and Ted Hughes' "Hawk Roosting" both reflect on the relationship between birds of prey and the rest of the world due to their unique perspective, and although either poem is written from a slightly different perspective, they both nonetheless celebrate the view the bird of prey has of the world, and the serenity which seemingly stems from this. By examining the similarities between the two poems, one is able to see how Hughes' and Tennyson's views of nature coincide in the form of the solitary, stoic bird of prey that seemingly embodies the dual peace and chaos of the natural world.

The first crucial similarity to note about both poems is that in many ways, they describe the same image from slightly different perspectives. Tennyson's poem describes an eagle roosting as "he clasps the crag with crooked hands," whereas Hughes' narrator is the bird itself, and so directly mentions how he is sitting "in the top of the wood, my eyes closed" and with "hooked feet" that "are locked upon the rough bark" (Tennyson 1, Hughes 1, 3, 9). Both poets begin with the image of a solitary bird surveying its territory, and by focusing on the birds' hands, the poets give the impression of a kind of timelessness achieved by the animals through the strength of their grip. As Tennyson and Hughes are painting the image of their respective birds, aside from their hands both poets note the position of the bird between the sun and earth.

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Hughes' hawk remarks that "the air's buoyancy and the sun's rays / are of advantage to me; / and the earth's face upward for my inspection," while Tennyson describes the eagle as "close to the sun in lonely lands, / ring'd with the azure world" (Hughes 5-8, Tennyson 2-3). In both cases, the effect is to create a kind of division between the earth and sky, with the roosting bird of prey occupying this line. This division between the earth and the space above is important, because after setting up the initial image of the bird of prey and its position midway between earth and sky, both poems quickly shift from the images of still tranquility….....

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