7 o BIRDS IN LEGEND 



readers to appreciate the value of his simile — to know 

 that eagles were credited with just this power of juvenes- 

 cence. "When," in the words of an even older chronicler, 

 "an eagle hathe darkness and dimness in een, and heavi- 

 nesse in wings, against this disadvantage she is taught by 

 kinde to seek a well of springing water, and then she flieth 

 up into the aire as far as she may, till she be full hot by 

 heat of the air and by travaille of flight, and so then by 

 heat the pores being opened, and the feathers chafed, and 

 she f alleth sideingly into the well, and there the feathers 

 be chaunged and the dimness of her een is wiped away 

 and purged, and she taketh again her might and strength." 

 Isn't that a finely constructed tale? Spencer thought so 

 when he wrote: 



As eagle fresh out of the ocean wave, 

 Where he hath left his plumes, all hoary gray, 

 And decks himself with feathers, youthful, gay. 



Margaret C. Walker 39 elaborates the legend in her 

 excellent book, suggesting that it may have originated in 

 contemplation of the great age to which eagles are sup- 

 posed to live; but to my mind it grew out of the ancient 

 symbolism that made the eagle represent the sun, which 

 plunges into the western ocean every night, and rises, 

 its youth renewed every morning. 



"It is related, ,, says Miss Walker, "that when this bird feels 

 the season of youth is passing by, and when his young are still 

 in the nest, he leaves the aging earth and soars toward the 

 sun, the consumer of all that is harmful. Mounting upward to 

 the third region of the air — the region of meteors — he circles 

 and swings about under the great fiery ball in their midst, turn- 

 ing every feather to its scorching rays, then, with wings drawn 

 back, like a meteor himself, he drops into some cold spring or 

 into the ocean wave there to have the heat driven inward by 

 the soul-searching chill of its waters. Then flying to his eyrie 



