Symbol Analysis
Yeah, we know: the title of the poem is about hawks, the poem is all about hawks—how can they also be symbols? Doesn't that go right against everything that Jeffers believed, that the world itself was itself, not how people imagined it? But hey, nobody said that poetry was going to be without contradictions.
Just so you know, this poem is actually about hurt birds. So sue a poet for letting thoughts about them bring him to other bigger ideas about dying or God. Jeffers is a self-avowed pantheist, remember (source). Everything is connected. More than anything else, this hawk seems like a kind of role model for the speaker himself. He'd like to have that same ferocity in the face of pain and imminent death.
- Line 2: Who waves the banner of defeat but a soldier in retreat? Here the hawk has been defeated on the battlefield of life. It's quite the bummer.
- Line 5: Although "game" has become all but cliché, think back to its beginnings. You bagged an animal by "fair game." This one has talons, though, so look out.
- Lines 11-12: Maybe the reason nothing but death can humble this cool customer is he can meet death's stare with "intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes." It's like this hawk is nearly as scary tough as death itself.
- Lines 16-17: If it's not enough to match death, we can take comfort in these lines, which seem to say that the hawk is just a short distance from the wild God of the world himself. He's got that "intemperate and savage," "beautiful and wild" thing down.
- Line 23: You'd never see a hawk at the side of the road with a sign panhandling. Not him. When the speaker says the second hawk's asking for death is "not like a beggar" this simile is discarded because of this bird's "old implacable arrogance."