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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  The Flight of the War-Eagle

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

The Flight of the War-Eagle

By Obadiah Cyrus Auringer (1849–1937)

[Born in Glens Falls, N. Y., 1849. Died there, 1937. Scythe and Sword. Poems. 1887.]

THE EAGLE of the armies of the West,

Dying upon his alp, near to the sky,

Through the slow days that paled the imperial eye,

But could not tame the proud fire of his breast,—

Gone with the mighty pathos! Only rest

Remains where passed that struggle stern and high;

Rest, silence, broken sometimes by the cry

Of mother and eaglets round the ravaged nest.

’Twas when the death-cloud touched the mountain crest,

A singer among the awed flocks cowering nigh,

Looked up and saw against the sunrise sky

An eagle, in ethereal plumage dressed,

Break from the veil, and flame his buoyant flight

Far toward the hills of heaven unveiled and bright.

23 July, 1885.