Montague's American readers who expect Mount Eagle to return to the political themes of The Dead Kingdom and his masterwork The Rough Field or to the poignant erotic poetry of Tides and The Great Cloak will find a handful of poems haunting these topics. However, most of this volume departs into new terrain, such as American Indian legends, fish-eye and avian perspectives, and the activities of children and others in life's borderland. Certain poems here, such as "The Hill of Silence," will earn their permanence in our literature where, in the words of Robin Skelton, "John Montague's voice will always be raised in the ranks of our great poets." Other poems will offer the pleasure in their sequences of minute and mature observations sounded in a music of the spoken voice.