Back

Patriotic Poetry – The Eagle as National Emblem

The American Eagle

Bird of Columbia! well art thou

An emblem of our native land;

With unblenched front and noble brow,

Among the nations doomed to stand;

Proud, like her mighty mountain woods;

Like her own rivers wandering free;

And sending forth from hills and floods

The joyous shout of liberty!

Like thee, majestic bird! like thee,

She stands in unbought majesty,

With spreading wings, untired and strong,

That dares a soaring far and long,

That mounts aloft, nor looks below

And will not quail, though tempests blow.

The admiration of earth,

In grand simplicity she stands;

Like thee, the storms beheld her birth,

And she was nursed by ragged hands;

But, pasted the fierce and furious war,

Her rising fame new glory brings,

For kings and nobles come from far

To seek the shelter of her wings.

And like thee, rider of the cloud,

She mounts the heavens, serene and proud,

Great in her pure and noble fame,

Great in her spotless champion's name,

And destined in her day to be Mighty as Rome, more nobly free.

---C. W. Thompson

The Eagle

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.

---Alfred Tennyson

The Eagle, Our National Emblem

   On the backs of our gold coins, the silver dollar, the half dollar and the quarter, we see an eagle with outspread wings.
   On the Great Seal of the United States and in many places which are exponents of our nation's authority we see the same emblem.
    The eagle represents freedom. Living as he does on the tops of lofty mountains, amid the solitary grandeur of Nature, he has unlimited freedom, whether with strong pinions he sweeps into the valleys below, or upward into the boundless spaces beyond.
    It is said the eagle was used as a national emblem because, at one of the first battles of the Revolution (which occurred early in the morning) the noise of the struggle awoke the sleeping eagles on the heights and they flew from their nests and circled about over the heads of the fighting men, all the while giving vent to their raucous cries. "They are shrieking for Freedom," said the patriots.
   Thus the eagle, full of the boundless spirit of freedom, living above the valleys, strong and powerful in his might, has become the national emblem of a country that offers freedom in word and thought and an opportunity for a full and free expansion into the boundless space of the future.

 --Maude M. Grant 

History of Bald Eagles

What Do Bald Eagles Look Like? – Physical Descriptions

Where Do Bald Eagles Live?

What Do Bald Eagles Eat? – Food Sources and Hunting Habits

Breeding Cycles of Bald Eagles – Mating and Nesting

Migration Patterns of Bald Eagles

Normal Lifespans and Causes of Death for Bald Eagles

Patriotic Poetry – The Eagle as National Emblem