Nay, if thou be that princely eagle’s bird, Show thy descent by gazing ’gainst the sun.[47] With delightful hyperbole, Biron, in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, discovers a power of vision beyond that of an eagle, when he is persuading himself and his friends to abjure their foolish vow “to fast, to study, and to see no woman.” Enlarging on the potency of “love first learned in a lady’s eyes” he declares that it Gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye: A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound, When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d.[48] Again, in the same Play, the comparison becomes even more grotesquely exaggerated, for the same lover in praising his lady-love demands to know What peremptory eagle-sighted eye Dares look upon the heaven of her brow, That is not blinded by her majesty?[49] [Illustration: THE EAGLE] The eagle was credited not only with a wonderful strength of vision, but also with a remarkable length of life. This belief is alluded to by the churlish philosopher who demands of Timon Will these moss’d trees, That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels, And skip where thou point’st out?[50] Shakespeare, when he likens the orders of human society to the various grades among the birds, compares the leaders to eagles, and the commonalty to birds of a less reputable kind. The haughty Coriolanus stigmatises the Roman plebs as a rabble that Will in time Break ope the locks o’ the Senate, and bring in The crows to peck the eagles.[51] Pandarus, not less contemptuous of the populace of Troy, affirms that “the eagles are gone,” and that there are left only “crows and daws, crows and daws.”[52] The same kind of similitude is applied to the political condition of England. The future Richard III. asserts: I cannot tell: the world is grown so bad That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.[53] And Hastings in the same Play remarks More pity that the eagle should be mew’d While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.[54] Among Shakespeare’s political allusions in which the eagle appears there is one of some interest as a reminiscence of a far-off unhappy time in our history when the southern half of the island could be likened to the king of birds, while the northern portion was compared to a destructive kind of vermin. Once the eagle, England, being in prey, To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs, Playing the mouse, in absence of the cat, To tear and havoc more than she can eat.[55] The contemplation of the various misfortunes that may befall even the king of birds leads to the reflection: Often, to our comfort, shall we find The sharded beetle in a safer hold Than is the full-wing’d eagle.[56]