EAGLE LIFE 



the watch-fires lighted in the evening sky; and when these 

 burn low and darkness closes in, he sees the forests of pines 

 as a green bloom on the bronze mountains — like the purple 

 bloom on the grape — gradually sink into their dark back- 

 ground, leaving them black and somber — then the moun- 

 tains themselves sink into and become a part of the darkness. 



Again he sees the life going out of the living clouds as 

 the sunlight leaves them — their rose and pale gold and ame- 

 thyst lights purpling and graying till they are deadened and 

 darksome as the mountains beneath them. And when the 

 clouds have grown heavy and the storm gathers, when the 

 fierce lightning darts about among the cleft peaks in the 

 distance, when, as it comes nearer, great trees bend to the 

 blast or are uprooted by its force, when all living creatures 

 in the comparatively safe valley below are filled with terror 

 — rabbits cowering in their burrows, field-mice seeking home 

 shelter, the owl perching close to the trunk of her home tree, 

 and the woodpecker scarcely daring to peep from her hole — 

 the eagle shows no fear. Facing the storm on his solitary 

 bough, by the fiapping of his great wings he shows his enjoy- 

 ment in the warfare of the elements. The fierce heart of the 

 eagle is made glad as he defiantly faces the storm. 



Compared with this, what, to him, were the conflicts 

 of men at the head of whose armies he was borne in the years 

 that are gone? 



When he chooses to leave his lofty perch, one stroke of 

 his mighty wings carries him far into the air, and he mounts 

 to heights far beyond mortal vision, in ever-narrowing 

 spirals, till he seems to disappear in the sun itself. 



When again he is seen, seemingly motionless wings are 

 bearing him along, far above the highest peaks — and beyond 

 the mountains, where a diflFerent world lies beneath him — 



47 



