Imagery. The use of language to represent sense experience, either sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste. Often poets utilize this device to convey their messages. The images depicted often deal with nature or natural events, such as snow, rain, or landscape. One poet who has used the landscape in one of his poems is Alfred Lord Tennyson. Tennyson portrayed an eagle against the "backdrop" of an azure sky and mountain in his poem, "The Eagle: A Fragment." Just from reading the title, one begins to question, especially the word "fragment." The significance of the term is later revealed.

The poem, consisting of only two stanzas, is one of pure imagery. The first description is of an eagle sitting of the side of a mountain, while digging its talons into the rock. The eagle, a bird of prey, of strength, size, gracefulness, keen vision and power of flight, is pictured as lonely. The bird, also known for his power and strength seems rather small against its surroundings. Although the eagle is alone and small against nature, its majestic stereotype is maintained by the placement of the bird at great height or as the poem states, "Close to the sun." The second depiction is a comparison of the eagle to a thunderbolt falling from the mountain.

The eagle, at its great height, is a representation of a man at the peak of his life, clinging on desperately. The mountain represent the universe. Similar to the eagle's smallness as compared to the mountain, is man's as compared to the universe. The man is lonely in that he must enter and leave the world alone. Just as the eagle is a part or fragment of the mountain, the man is a part of the universe and they both leave when they "fall off." Both are encircled by their "worlds" and must stand or endure. The sea delineates life and the return to it after death because of the theory that states such. The thunderbolt characterizes death in that both are sudden, effective, and momentary. A thunderbolt is loud and it disappears just as quickly as it appears. Man was supposedly born water, and returns to his origins after death. Thus the water below the cliff maintains that idea as the eagle presumably falls in. In addition, the last words of each stanza, "stands" and "falls," are opposite to each other in definition. "Falls" is often used to convey death, while "stands" is used to convey endurance. Thus, falls and the suddenness of the thunderbolt, together convey death.