The Albatross

to entertain themselves, the men of the crew lure upon deck an unlucky albatross, one of those vast birds of the sea that follow unweary the voyage through, flying in slow and elegant circles above the mast. No sooner have they disentangled him from their nets than this aerial colossus, shorn of his pride goes hobbling pitibly about the planks

and lets his great wings hang like heavy, useless oars at his side. How droll is this poor floundering creature? How limp and weak he but a moment past so lordly flying in state. They tease him. One of them tries to stick a pipe in his beak.

Another mimics with laughter his odd lurching gate. The poet is like that wild inheritor of the cloud, a rider of storms above the range of arrows and slings exiled on earth at bay among the jeering crowd.

He cannot walk for his unmanageable wings.