A brief analysis on Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Eagle,” reproduced below for ease of accessibility:

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.

The images conjured tell of age, of war-hardened kings, of ancient and wise power—especially in the evocation of the Zeusian “thunderbolt.” It almost appears as though the dying days of a king are described, as he futilely attempts to conquer the ignominy of indomitable death. But he can no longer, and voluntarily or involuntarily, he falls. The sea, as even Hamlet touches on, is a symbol of disintegration, of diluvian anonymity, sweeping everything out of sight, the great leveler. This is an idea many myths fall in line with: the Mesopotamian Utnapishtim, the Greek Deucalion and Pyrrha, the Biblical Noah’s Ark, the Hindu manvantara-sandhya. But it can also be that he’s seen a moment, some weakness to capitalize on, that his wits remain about him, that his fall is entirely calculated, deceptive, feigned.