'Mighty Eagle'
Mighty eagle! thou that soarestO'er the misty mountain forest,And amid the light of morningLike a cloud of glory hiest,And when night descends defiestThe embattled tempests' warning!
Words in this poem
- amid prep.
- In the midst or middle of; surrounded or encompassed by; among. [OE. amidde, amiddes, on midden, AS. on middan, in the middle, fr. midde the middle. The s is an adverbial ending, originally marking the genitive; the t is a la]
- embattled a.
- Having indentations like a battlement.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
'Mighty Eagle' is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #4798; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Mighty Eagle', in Ode to the West Wind, and Other Poems (1816–1819), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4798, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shelley-later-poems/mighty-eagle.html, id L16314.
Form and metre
'Mighty Eagle' is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes AABAAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%).
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABAAB soarestA · forestA · morningB · hiestA · defiestA · warningB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Mighty eagle! thou that soarest | 8 | /˘/˘··/˘ |
| O'er the misty mountain forest, | 8 | ··/˘/˘/˘ |
| And amid the light of morning | 8 | ·˘/···/˘ |
| Like a cloud of glory hiest, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| And when night descends defiest | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| The embattled tempests' warning! | 9 | ·˘/˘˘··/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.