EAGLES AND AET. 
237 
for with a roar of sudden wings and gleam of a golden burn- 
ish, came it not down upon thee out of the still air — that 
fearful retribution — thou undutiful truant ? 
In the giddiness of thy wanton youth, didst thou not wan- 
der away from that fond and anxious sheep, which was to 
thee a mother ? Eegardless of the agonized bleatings by 
which she sought to recall thee to her dugs, didst thou not 
continue to climb the mountain-side, and in heedless aggra- 
vation of her tearful woe, frisk upon the perilous verge of 
bleakest rocks, where the strong winds made the grass to sing 
underneath thy hoofs ? 
In the blindness of thy obdurate pride of place, thou 
couldst not see the danger ; but in a fell swoop it is upon thee 
now ! Ay, it is too late to shrink ! too late to turn back thy 
repentant heart to that poor deserted parent, whose prolonged 
and plaintive ba-a-a fills all the valley — too late ! 
Ah, rash ambition, it is ever thus ! Thou Phaeton, thou 
Icarus of lambkins ! why could not the lowly plain content 
thee ? " The aspiration in thy heel " has been sad for thee ; 
it has but brought thee to thy downfall ! 
Poor lamb ! there is a vivid life here that makes thy pangs 
seem real, and we almost shudder while those terrible talons 
burn into the tender flesh ; and while the aerial robber pauses 
with mighty wings outstretched, we can see the yellow shine 
of ravin in its eye, glow as pitiless as if we stood near the 
fierce bird alive, when it had just stooped from amidst the 
cloudy crags of the White Mountains upon some vagrant 
firstling of a New Hampshire farmer's flock. 
This is no mere fable, but is a breathing and living truth 
out of the natural world ; at least its life in form and colors 
is like breathing. It is more than the old fable, for our 
modern ^sop is the artist, who tells his story with the pen- 
cil and the burin rather than the wagging tongue. 
If he make bird and beast speak together, as they used to 
for our childhood in that old book, it is not by the unnatural 
use of human speech, but in action, real presentations of their 
