The Eagles Are Coming

So screamed Bilbo at the end of the Hobbit during the battle of the Five Armies.

I'd never seen an eagle in my life before and then last week on Vancouver Island I saw 2 . Different days, different beaches, different sides fo the island but equally stunning. The second time the eagle circled round a few times before settling on a tree just behind us. The Elvish Princess and I stopped our picnic and looked in awe - it was so close we could hear the beating of his wings. If i was a poet I would write a verse but even now I just find myself filled with silent awe at the beauty. Luckily Gerard Manley Hopkins had a smiliar experience a century and a continent apart from mine but his words on seeing a falcon flying one morning are still beautiful and i offer them to you.

blessings


The Windhover
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins