Often to pass the time on board, the crew <br />will catch an albatross, one of those big birds <br />which nonchalently chaperone a ship <br />across the bitter fathoms of the sea. <br /> <br />Tied to the deck, this sovereign of space, <br />as if embarrassed by its clumsiness, <br />pitiably lets its great white wings <br />drag at its sides like a pair of unshipped oars. <br /> <br />How weak and awkward, even comical <br />this traveller but lately so adoit - <br />one deckhand sticks a pipestem in its beak, <br />another mocks the cripple that once flew! <br /> <br />The Poet is like this monarch of the clouds <br />riding the storm above the marksman's range; <br />exiled on the ground, hooted and jeered, <br />he cannot walk because of his great wings.<br /><br />Charles Baudelaire<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-albatross/
