I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.(Lines 1-4)
Ted Hughes’s poem Hawk Roosting is about a hawk that is made to speak and express its positon and power. The present extract is from the soliloquy of that hawk, resting quite at case, at that top of a tree.
The hawk perches on the topmost branch of a tree, in a posture of repose, with its eyes closed. It indulges in no activity, and is absolutely in a state of indolence, delightfully thinking and feeling of its own advantageous postition. The hawk is quite satisfied with its position on the top of a high tree. After all, this is no deception, dream, no fanciful, unreal situation for the bird. The hawk is in its posture of repose, between its head and feet, rather curved and hook-like. It may even drowse, as it rehearses its function to catch, kill and eat its prey.
The stanza is a simple but vivid description of the hawk, roosting at the topmost branch of a tree. Of course, the whole description is given by the hawk itself, but it is quite clear and expressive, and bears out a self-complacent mood of the hawk.
Also read; Discuss the patriotic notes in W.B.Yeats’s poem ‘Easter 1916’