![i-61084c93b15e0444ecf412febe13845a-haliaeetus_leucoryphus[3].jpg](http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/wp-content/blogs.dir/280/files/2012/04/i-61084c93b15e0444ecf412febe13845a-haliaeetus_leucoryphus[3].jpg)
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, Lord Tennyson
Picture is of a Pallas' Fish Eagle (Haliaeetus leucoryphus Pallas, 1771), a declining species native to Asia. Today marks the birthday in 1741 of Peter Simon Pallas, the German zoologist after whom the species is named.
We had to memorise The Eagle at school. I can still recite it verbatim 30 years later.
THIRTY years! Oh good grief!
thanks John. i love that poem and you are very sweet to publish it for me.