Ted Hughes:

The Hawk in the Rain

More than fifty years after its publication, The Hawk in the Rain remains one of Ted Hughes’s most
important, and most accomplished, collections. Many of Hughes’s best-known poems, such as ‘The
Hawk in the Rain,’ ‘The Jaguar,’ ‘The Thought-Fox,’ and ‘Wind’— now staples of British poetry
anthologies— first appeared here. These were the poems that established Hughes’s reputation as a
poet of elemental sensibilities whose stressed, alliterative cadences conjured a primeval world of
strength and struggle. Hughes sought to re-establish the connection between poetry and revelation in
The Hawk in the Rain.
Through his use of stressed syllables and frequent alliteration, which recalled the rhythms of Anglo-
Saxon verse, Hughes returns readers to an England that is dark, inhospitable, home to warring
factions, and legendary. The strong, assertive language of “The Hawk in the Rain,” the first poem in
the collection, sets the tone for the rest of the book, and indeed for much of Hughes’s later work.
While The Hawk in the Rain is often cited as the collection that brought Hughes fame as a “nature
poet,” that label is misleading. Although nature is a central preoccupation, themes of violence,
competition, war, and struggle dominate the book. In ‘The Hawk in the Rain,’ for example, the hawk
becomes an emblem of humanity in its futile attempt to master the elements, while nature is a
malevolent force bent on extinguishing life. Escape is impossible; the hawk, like the speaker, will
eventually “mix his heart’s blood with the mire of the land.” The hawk is a reminder of nature’s
indifference to ideals. Likewise, ‘Wind,’ one of Hughes’s strongest poems, records a family’s awe and
terror as they ride out a “stampeding” storm upon the moors inside their home, watching the “Blade-
light” of the wind as it cuts through the landscape. Here, as in ‘The Hawk in the Rain,’ nature is a
cold, powerful, amoral force. Hughes offers no Emersonian optimism about the wind’s purpose; it
does not compel the onlooker to self-awareness or exhilaration but rather thwarts any human attempt
to ‘experience’ its awesome force. If the wind could be said to symbolize anything, it would be
negation, annihilation; even “the stones cry out under the horizons.” We are far from Wordsworth’s
bucolic, restorative Lake Country where man and nature achieve mutual harmony.
The Hawk in the Rain not only introduced readers to a Schopenhaurian vision of nature characterized
by “positive violence,” it also marked Hughes’s debut as a war poet. As Hughes himself wrote in the
Poetry Book Society Bulletin in 1957, “After thinking the poems over I have decided to say this.
What excites my imagination is the war between vitality and death, and my poems may be said to
celebrate the exploits of the warriors of either side”. Several poems in The Hawk in the Rain speak to
Hughes’s ongoing obsession with the First World War, in which his father had fought. ‘Griefs for
Dead Soldiers’ and ‘Six Young Men’ are poignant elegies for the young Yorkshiremen who died on
the battlefields of Flanders, while ‘Bayonet Charge,’ ‘The Ancient Heroes and the Bomber Pilot’ and
‘Two Wise Generals’ speak to man’s violent nature. This nature is portrayed vividly in ‘Law in the
Country of Cats,’ which caught Sylvia Plath’s attention when it was first published in the St Botolph’s
Review.
Violence is not glorified here or in any of Hughes’s work. Rather, Hughes stages an interrogation with
what he has termed the dark and divine laws of nature; he also seeks to expose, in his words, “our
extraordinary readiness to exploit, oppress, torture and kill our own kind.” This interrogation will
continue throughout his work, most notably in Lupercal,Crow and the war-haunted poems of Remains
of Elmet.
The Hawk in the Rain is both the foundation upon which this later work rests and an influential
collection in its own right. Sylvia Plath’s heady description of the book perhaps best captures the
excitement with which she and Hughes embarked upon a campaign to create a new kind of modern
poetry.

SUMMARY

The speaker in the poem says that he is walking laboriously on the ground because there is deep mud
through which he has to drag himself when it is also raining heavily. While he is going through a real
ordeal in thus dragging himself through the mud in the heavy rain, a hawk, perched at a height, looks
downwards calmly and without showing any sign of discomfort. The hawk sits “effortlessly” at a high
point, maintaining his equilibrium. The hawk’s wings seem to hold all Creation without having to
exert themselves in the least. The hawk sits steadily without being in the least shaken by the strong
and cold wind that strikes against the body of the speaker in the poem, hitting every organ of his body.
Indeed, the speaker in the poem feels that the rain is cutting through his head and reaching his very
bones, while the hawk sits determinedly, thus displaying unshakable willpower. The speaker feels that
he would be swallowed by the mud on the earth. He is acutely conscious of the violence of Nature at
this time, while the hawk sits still and at ease. But then it occurs to the speaker that a day would come
when this hawk, taking a wrong direction in the course of a furious storm, would be forced
downwards and flung down to the earth, to be killed instantaneously. Then the hawk’s blood would
mingle with the mud on the ground.

CRITICAL APPRECIATION

The Hawk in the Rain

is one of Hughes’s most famous poems. The whole volume of poems, Hughes’s first publication
(which appeared in 1957), was called “The Hawk

in the

Rain” after the title of this one poem.

The theme of this poem is the contrast between the steadiness, the stability, and the strengthof a
hawk (perched on some cliff or crag or rock or tree) and the unsteadiness and the sense ofdanger of
a human being when it is raining heavily and when a strong, cold wind is also blowing. The hawk
remains unperturbed by the heavy rain and the strong wind, and maintainshis equilibrium and poise.
But the man struggles through the mud on the ground, feeling afraidlest he should sink into it and be
swallowed by the earth. The hawk shows his strong willagainst the rain and against the violence of
the wind, while the man feels that his end is near.However, the last stanza expresses a different idea.
The hawk would one day meet his end

when, “coming the wrong way,” he might be hurled downwards by the fury of the storm andkilled.
While the poem shows the hawk’s superiority over man in terms of will

-power and the power of endurance, it also shows that the hawk is not immortal or invulnerable.The
poem contains graphic imagery, like the bulk the poems in the same volume, and likemost of the
other poems which Hughes wrote subsequently. We are given a vivid picture of aman struggling
through mud and feeling that he might be swallowed by the earth. We also havea vivid picture of the
hawk perched effortlessly at a height, maintaining a still eye. The finalstanza presents the most vivid
picture of the hawk being hurled down by a furious storm, anddashing against the earth, to be killed
instantaneously.The pictures in this poem have been presented to our minds by means of striking
words

put together in original combinations. Indeed, this poem shows Hughes’s skilful use of the

language even though simplicity is sacrificed in the process. Some of the most impressive lines,as
regards the use of language, are the following:While banging wind kills these stubborn
hedges,Thumbs my eyes, throws my breath, tackles my heart,And rain hacks my head to the bone,
the hawk hangs