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.’

I can think of no better symbol for the soul than the majestic hawk. The hawk, to me, symbolizes the spiritual world. There is a certain stoicism to their demeanor that is unlike that of any other living creature, a fierce silence that commands respect and reverence. They soar high above the material world and are sustained aloft by the invisible winds, as souls dwell in the invisible heavens.

A hawk, like a soul, cannot be subdued or mastered. As a falconer I can assure you that hawks never fully come under the control of their falconer, instead they work with you to the degree that you work with them to accomplish a shared objective. Moreover, the partnership is weakened by both ignorance and timidity.

You are the falconer to your soul, the yellow-eyed hawk of the mind. If you do not call to it, work with it intelligently and cultivate a dynamic and reverential relationship, your hawk will continue to soar above you and as a consequence the heaven of your experience shall be disconnected from the earth in which you dwell.