"The Eagle" allows us to look at the world through poetry-colored glasses. It's like a beginner's guide to the craft of poetry, not because it's simple, but because
Tennyson doesn't hide his bag of tricks. He lays it right in front of you and says, "Look, this is what alliteration can do. And see this? It's a perfect example of personification. And then the final line – a metaphor, of course." No wonder English teachers love using this work to introduce poetry to students.
Nor does Tennyson hide the fact that he's distorting reality. You could also compare "The Eagle" to a magic mirror in a carnival – the kind that makes your head look like a watermelon and your hips vanish into nothingness. The poem produces similarly strange visual effects. At one point the eagle seems almost as far away as the sun, and at another the ocean looks like a person crawling on hands and knees. Tennyson recognizes that this is how people think. The way we look at the world is determined as much by the funny sounds we use (ahem, words) and the strange comparisons we make as by the actual nature of things. Tennyson takes the same principle we use when we lie on the grass and gaze at clouds ("That one looks like an elephant standing on top of a house!") and applies it to the scene with the eagle.
Some people will say that "The Eagle" captures the
essence or
truth of an eagle perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Their belief shows how persuasively Tennyson presents his own quirky view of things. The poem reveals the power of the imagination to create its own truth. When you look at a magic mirror in a carnival, you know that your head isn't
really that wide or your hips that narrow, but that doesn't mean you're looking at an illusion. After all, you and the mirror are really there. What you get is a different way of looking at things. People read "The Eagle" for the same reason they read (or watch)
Alice in Wonderland: it's the same old world we all recognize, but viewed with fresh and childlike eyes.