Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Eagle
So, in the Libyan fable it is told
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
“With our own feathers, not by others’ hand
Are we now smitten.”
Æschylus—Fragment. 123. Plumptre’s trans. The idea of the eagle struck by a feather from her own wing is proverbial. See note by Porson, 139, to Euripides’ Medea. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Reiske’s ed. 970. Eustathius—ad Iliad. P. 632. 489. Scholiast—On Lucian. Vol. I. P. 794. Roger L’ Estrange, Fables of Æsop. 48. Eagle and the Arrow.
So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing’d the shaft that quivered in his heart.
Byron—English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. L. 826.
Tho’ he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
That the Theban eagle bear,
Sailing with supreme dominion
Thro’ the azure deep of air.
Gray—Progress of Poesy.
King of the peak and glacier,
King of the cold, white scalps,
He lifts his head at that close tread,
The eagle of the Alps.
Victor Hugo—Swiss Mercenaries.
Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.
Matthew. XXIV. 28.
The bird of Jove, stoop’d from his aery tour,
Two birds of gayest plume before him drove.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. XI. L. 184.
Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume,
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,
See their own feathers pluck’d, to wing the dart,
Which rank corruption destines for their heart!
Moore—Corruption.
Bird of the broad and sweeping wing,
Thy home is high in heaven,
Where wide the storms their banners fling,
And the tempest clouds are driven.
Percival—To the Eagle.
And little eagles wave their wings in gold.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. to Addison. L. 30.
I saw Jove’s bird, the Roman eagle, wing’d
From the spungy south to this part of the west,
There vanish’d in the sunbeams.
Cymbeline. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 348.
But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,
Leaving no track behind.
Timon of Athens. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 49.
The eagle suffers little buds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby.
Titus Andronicus. Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 83.
Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling
With clangs of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed
Shelley—Revolt of Islam. Canto I. St. 10.
He clasps the crag with hooked 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 wails,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Tennyson—The Eagle.
Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens?
If all the world were falcons, what of that?
The wonder of the eagle were the less,
But he not less the eagle.
Tennyson—Golden Year. L. 37.
That eagle’s fate and mine are one,
Which, on the shaft that made him die,
Espied a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high.
Edmund Waller—To a Lady Singing a Song of his Composing. Ep. XIV.