Evening Hawk

“Evening Hawk” has 23 lines divided into six uneven stanzas in its 1975 form. In some electronic versions, spacing and stanza breaks are removed. Stanza 2, beginning with “His wing” (Line 7), and Stanza 5, beginning with “Long now,” (Line 16) are both indented. The lines themselves do not individually possess a patterned meter and thus are free verse.

Warren’s principal organization instead comes through breaking the poem into stanzas. Stanza 1 (Lines 1-6) centers on a description of the hawk’s flight across the sky against the mountain. Stanza 2 (Lines 7-10) goes on to describe the sharpness of his wing and the passage of time. Stanza 3, only Line 11, hones in on human fallibility. The same pattern of meaning is repeated in the next three stanzas.

Stanza 4 (Lines 12-15) once again discusses the hawk’s flight, while Stanza 5 (Lines 16-20) further describes nature’s objects and what remains wise and fixed. The poem concludes with notations on the passage of time in Stanza 6 (Lines 21-23). This back-and-forth motion between the natural objects in the poem and the speaker’s feelings help to mimic the struggle one might have finding solace in the face of imminent death.