Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE HAWK, by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE HAWK, by                 Poet's Biography
First Line: Call down the hawk from the air
Last Line: A pretense of wit.'
Alternate Author Name(s): Yeats, W. B.
Subject(s): Birds; Hawks


'Call down the hawk from the air;
Let him be hooded or caged
Till the yellow eye has grown mild,
For larder and spit are bare,
The old cook enraged,
The scullion gone wild.'

'I will not be clapped in a hood,
Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,
Now I have learnt to be proud
Hovering over the wood
In the broken mist
Or tumbling cloud.'

'What tumbling cloud did you cleave,
Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,
Last evening? that I, who had sat
Dumbfounded before a knave,
Should give it to my friend
A pretense of wit.'





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