The Eagle

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)

Percy Bysshe Shelley was a central figure in the Romantic Movement and a key influence on Tennyson. Shelley’s well-known lyric poem shares many of the same themes as “The Eagle.” Shelley, too, focuses on power, empire, and vulnerability through the mythological “Ozymandias, King of Kings” (Line 10). Similar to the eagle—or one interpretation of what happens to the eagle—Ozymandias falls and meets his demise. He yields to “decay” (Line 12), and his environment turns “boundless and bare” (Line 13). To construct his portrait of the dilapidated king, Shelley uses imagery and alliteration—two key literary devices that Tennyson also features in “The Eagle.”

“The Lotos-eaters” by Alfred Tennyson (1832)

With “The Lotos-eaters” Tennyson once again uses a literary device, allusion. The title and theme link to events in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey (circa 8th century BCE). Odysseus, the poem’s protagonist, and his soldiers arrive on a tiny island where the inhabitants eat plants that make them laidback and happy. Critics tend to view the poem as a critique of imperialism, with the foreign land representing a potential colony, and Odysseus and company symbolizing hypothetical invaders. As with one interpretation of “The Eagle,” Tennyson arguably points out the fallibility of trying to conquer populations.