The Poetry Corner

The Hawk

By William Butler Yeats

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 to my friend A pretence of wit.