The Hawk
'Call down the hawk from the air;Let him be hooded or cagedTill 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 proudHovering over the woodIn the broken mistOr tumbling cloud.'
'What tumbling cloud did you cleave,Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,Last evening? that I, who had satDumbfounded before a knave,Should give to my friendA pretence of wit.'
Words in this poem
- caged a.
- Confined in, or as in, a cage; like a cage or prison.
- larder n.
- A room or place where meat and other articles of food are kept before they are cooked. [OF. lardier. See Lard, n.]
- scullion n.
- A servant who cleans pots and kettles, and does other menial services in the kitchen. [OF. escouillon (Cot.) a dishclout, apparently for escouvillon, F. écouvillon a swab; cf. also OF. souillon a servant employed for base offices. Cf. Scovel.]
- knave n.
- A boy; especially, a boy servant. Wyclif. [OE., boy, servant, knave, AS. cnafa boy, youth; cf. AS. cnapa boy, youth, D. kna, G. knabe boy, knappe esquire, Icel. knapi, Sw. knape esquire, knäfvel knave.]
- pretence n.
- The act of laying claim; the claim laid; assumption; pretension. [LL. praetensus, for L. praetentus, p. p. of praetendere. See Pretend, and cf. Tension.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Hawk is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Wild Swans at Coole, Project Gutenberg ebook #32491; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. B. Yeats, The Hawk, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/the-hawk.html, id L20014.
Form and metre
The Hawk is 18 lines in 3 stanzas of 6 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABCABC, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABCABC airA · cagedB · mildC · bareA · enragedB · wildC
- 2 ABCABC hoodA · wristB · proudC · woodA · mistB · cloudC
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| 'Call down the hawk from the air; | 7 | ······· |
| Let him be hooded or caged | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Till the yellow eye has grown mild, | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| For larder and spit are bare, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| The old cook enraged, | 5 | ···˘/ |
| The scullion gone wild.' | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| 'I will not be clapped in a hood, | 8 | ········ |
| Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist, | 9 | ····˘/··· |
| Now I have learnt to be proud | 7 | ······· |
| Hovering over the wood | 7 | /˘˘···· |
| In the broken mist | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Or tumbling cloud.' | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| 'What tumbling cloud did you cleave, | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind, | 7 | /˘····· |
| Last evening? that I, who had sat | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Dumbfounded before a knave, | 7 | /˘˘···· |
| Should give to my friend | 5 | ····· |
| A pretence of wit.' | 5 | ····· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.