Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CAGED EAGLE, by GERTRUDE B. GUNDERSON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CAGED EAGLE, by                    
First Line: One thrilling sweep from out the fastness
Last Line: And walked back to his cage.
Subject(s): Birds; Eagles; Grief; Prisons & Prisoners; Wings; Sorrow; Sadness; Convicts


One thrilling sweep from out the fastnesses
Of mountain crags—into the vaulted blue,
To try his youthful wings.
Below him churned the angry, dauntless sea,
Above, rolled wind-spun clouds—a grand review
Of hushed immensity.—

And then imprisonment! ...

He thrashed defeated wings against the bars
That kept him from the taunting mountain peaks—
The far-flung sky and stars.
Through bitter days of cruel punishment
He strove to bend or break his prison-walls,
Enraged—but impotent.
He caught dim shadows of the friendly trees;
He heard the birds fling happy mating calls
Like glad antiphonies. ....
Mad grief and pain and galling memory
Bore natural fruit ... and gradually free life
Was but a hazy dream.
He ceased to struggle ... walked his dingy cell—
Grim bars looked commonplace as harsh salt spray.
At length, through rust of years
These bars corroded, and all barriers fell,
And he was free, once more to choose his way. ...
He shyly walked about,
He stared into the longed-for, beckoning blue—
At sunlit slopes for which his heart had yearned;
It seemed an untold age
Since mountain peak had called. ... or sky-flung view
Of clouds and sea ... With quivering wings he turned
And walked back to his cage.





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