Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

 

"The Dalliance of the Eagles"

(1880)

 

Walt Whitman

(May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892)

 

 

      

Cope's Tobacco Plant (1880)
Leaves of Grass (1881–82)
Skirting the river road, (my languid forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward, in air, a sudden muffled sound—the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching, interlocking claws—a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings—two beaks—A swirling mass, tight grappling,
In tumbling, turning, clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless, still balance in the air—then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again, on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate, diverse flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.		 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
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10		 Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.

 


"The Dalliance of the Eagles" Notes

This poem was first published in November 1880 in the magazine Cope's Tobacco Plant and later included in Leaves of Grass (1881–82) in Book XX "By the Roadside."

 

2  dalliance: love play or sexual play; playing in a love-motivated or sexual way


ARKive video - Juvenile bald eagles practising courtship ritual

9  pinions: wings

 

  • Merriam-Webster
    1: the terminal section of a bird's wing including the carpus, metacarpus, and phalanges; broadly: wing
    2: feather, quill; also: flight feathers
  • American Heritage Dictionary
    1. The wing of a bird.
    2. The outer rear edge of the wing of a bird, containing the primary feathers.
    3. A primary feather of a bird.
  • Oxford Dictionaries
    the outer part of a bird’s wing including the flight feathers.
    literary a bird’s wing as used in flight.
 wing




"Leaves of Grass is an iconoclasm, it starts out to shatter the idols of porcelain worshipped by the average poets of our age—not ruthlessly—not wantonly—but to do it seriously, as having a great purpose imposed. I love to go along through the land, taking in all natural objects, events,—noting them. For instance, watching the cow crunching the grass—I can hear its melodious crunch—crunch—its bovine music: the lips, soul, of song as much there as anywhere. And the mother at home knitting her children's stockings: not forgetting the yarn—not omitting the needle. The poet would not have that—it would lack in sound, elegance, what he calls poetic evidence. But for me it is my necessity—it is all music—the clef of things—to discriminate—not so much to produce an effect, or that at all—but to state the case—the case of the universe: to seize upon its typical phasings."

—Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. 6 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1982): 343.


[...] the manuscripts that do remain indicate that Whitman meticulously worked and reworked passages of his poems, heavily revising entire drafts of the poems, and that he issued detailed instructions to the Rome brothers, the printers who were setting his book in type, carefully overseeing every aspect of the production of his book. 

Whitman seems, then, to have been both inspired poet and skilled craftsman, at once under the spell of his newly discovered and intoxicating free verse style while also remaining very much in control of it, adjusting and altering and rearranging. For the rest of his life, he would add, delete, fuse, separate, and rearrange poems as he issued six very distinct editions of Leaves of Grass. Emerson once described Whitman’s poetry as "a remarkable mixture of the Bhagvat Ghita and the New York Herald," and that odd joining of the scriptural and the vernacular, the transcendent and the mundane, effectively captures the quality of Whitman’s work, work that most readers experience as simultaneously magical and commonplace, sublime and prosaic. It was work produced by a poet who was both sage and huckster, who touched the gods with ink-smudged fingers, and who was concerned as much with the sales and reviews of his book as with the state of the human soul.

—Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price, "Walt Whitman"



      

Study Questions

  • Notice that this description of two eagles in a courting ritual includes more than just the description. It is framed by a witnessing narrator on "[his] forenoon walk, [his] rest" (l. 1). How is going on a walk a kind of rest? Resting from what, do you think? How does this encounter with the eagles figure in that walk, that rest? How is it energetic? How is it restful? What impact does seeing the eagles have on the narrator that is revealed in the language and manner he uses to describe them?

  • Compare Whitman's poem to the following comments on YouTube in response to various video recordings of eagles in courtship flight. What seems to be a common feature in people's descriptions and impressions? How do the different posters use language and typography to manipulate pace and imagination to create imagery, motion, speed, intensity, etc. in order to convey their feelings? How do these witnesses express awe, rarity, serendipity, disappointment or fulfillment? What connections and meanings was Whitman able to express in the poem that the YouTubers did not attempt or were not able to achieve as effectively?
    • I've seen this eagle courting myself, in the NW of Scotland near Lochinver. There was a display in the visitor centre about the local Golden Eagles and how to spot them, and as we were leaving the town and heading north we saw two birds, little more than black specks, swooping and diving together right up by a high ridge on a mountainside. From their behaviour and altitude they were unmistakably eagles, and we could tell how huge they were, despite the distance.
    • Gorgeous photography. I saw a courtship ritual in Fort Ord, CA a few weeks ago. Unforgettable.
    • Male and female bald eagles fly around getting higher and higher and then they hook their tallons together and tumble to the earth and seperrating just before they make contact with the ground. bald eagles often mate for life but if breeding fails alot they might seperate and if one of the two dies or disappears the other will find a new mate and during courtship they will chase eachother and swoop and cartwheel and make different calls to eachother.
    • Wow! This is just so beautiful :)
      Makes me cry :)
    • I have been told by an expert that they can mate in the air, but you are right, it is more of a courting behavour, what ever it is I have been filming eagles for 20 years and this is the one and only time I have seen it like this.
    • All I wanted was some sweet sweet eagle porn. This, however, is kinda lame.
    • Talk about amazing! We were headed to my sons football game and we looked up and noticed 2 large birds flying together. I pulled over and got the camera and that is when we noticed they were BALD EAGLES!! We will never see something like this again, and when they locked talons and started to roll, we couldn't believe our eyes.
  • What role does landscape play in the descriptions (both in Whitman and in YouTube comments)? Why do people mention their surroundings? What effect does it have on the message being conveyed?
  • Consider Whitman's word choice. Why do you think he discards some words in the manuscript in favor of others by the time he revises the poem for Leaves of Grass which is the version in your coursebook? For example, how does "splendid swift loops--/over and over" compare to "a swirling mass tight grappling"? The word "gigantic" from the draft disappears in the published versions. What instead manages to denote and connote immense size and scale?

 

 



Sample Student Responses to Walt Whitman's "The Dalliance of the Eagles" 


   

Response 1:

Study Question:

 

 

 

 

 

Student Name

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 12, 2013

Reading Response 1

  

Title

 

Text.

 

 

 

 

 

            

 


 


Links

 


Walt Whitman



 


Walt Whitman

 



 

Reference

Whitman, Walt. "The Dalliance of the Eagles." Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. New York: Library of America, 1982. 412.  Print.


Further Reading

Pearce, Roy Harvey. Whitman: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962. Print.

    [Arts Library PS3238 P4]


Whitman, Walt. Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. New York: Library of America, 1982. Print.

    [IIC American Studies CS 811.3 WC]



 

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Last updated August 6, 2013