Familiar Quotations / A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to / Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature

by Unknown

So in the Libyan fable it is told

That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,

Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,

"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,

Are we now smitten."

Æschylus: Fragm. 123 (Plumptre's Translation).

So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,

No more through rolling clouds to soar again,

View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,

And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.