Kelly teaches creative writing at Oakton Community College and College of Lake County in Illinois. In this essay, he explores the anomalous nature of "The Eagle" among Tennyson's works of the early 1850s.

The fact that Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Eagle" is still studied along with the rest of his poetry is an oddity unto itself, testimony to the simple, clean package that the poem presents, to its unique power. The poem has hardly any large-scale significance in the history of literature, it just happens to be a powerful, solid piece of work. It certainly does not have the pointed mythological references, the historical significance or the biographical elements that stir modern curiosity about some of Tennyson's other works.

"The Eagle" deserves attention not for where it came from but for what it is, which is a poem that makes use of all of the tools...