To mate and to eaglets, the eagle
Shriek'd, "Gone is my foe of the deep mist,
"Rent by the vast hands of the kind Gods,
"Who knows the knife-pangs of our hunger!"
Shrill whistled the winds as his dun wings
Strove with it feather by feather;
Loud grated the rock as his talons
Its breast spurned slowly his red eyes.
Like fires seemed to flame in the swift wind,
At his sides the darts of his hunger—
At his ears the shriek of his eaglets—
In his breast the love of the quarry.
Unfurl'd to the northward and southward
His wings broke the air, and to eastward
His breast gave its iron; and God-ward
Pierc'd the shrill voice of his hunger.
Bared were his great sides as he laboured
Up the first steep blue of the broad sky;
His gaze on the fields of his freedom,
To the God's spoke the prayers of his gyres.
Bared were his vast sides as he glided
Black in the sharp blue of the north sky:
Black over the white of the tall cliffs,
Black over the arrow of Gisli.
* * * * *
THE SONG OF THE ARROW.
What know I,
As I bite the blue veins of the throbbing sky;
To the quarry's breast
Hot from the sides of the sleek smooth nest?
What know I
Of the will of the tense bow from which I fly?
What the need or jest,
That feathers my flight to its bloody rest.