The eagle opens with a kind of weary kinship, telling the sea-gull that his eyes sting from staring into the sun, just as the gull’s are battered by the ocean. Each bird holds a separate infinity—fathomless sky, fathomless sea—and between them rolls the brief, flickering tide of human lives that blossom and die. There’s no malice in it, just a calm, almost sorrowful recognition of scale. The eagle then imagines a world so shaken that mountains slide into the sea and the sea crawls back up the land, a dream of enormous, slow destruction. But immediately he pulls back, saying the mountains simply wait and sleep—patient, unshakeable. The sea-gull answers with its only reply: the old, wordless rhythm of the deep. The whole exchange feels like an ancient lullaby, vast and indifferent, where two elemental creatures share a quiet understanding of time’s sweep and our small place within it.
The Eagle's Song — Summary
The eagle sings to the sea-gull, "My eyes are blind with pain, Peering into the sun's face, As yours in the tossing main;
Yours are the depths of the sea, Mine the fathomless sky. Between us the tides of men Who blossom, and fall, and die."
The eagle sings to the sea-gull, "The world will toss and strain Till the mountains march to the sea, And the sea climbs back again."
The eagle sings to the sea-gull, "The mountains wait and sleep." And the sea-gull sings to the eagle The old sing-song of the deep.