The poem's chief delight is a controlling metaphor of the falconer with hooded bird. It is significant that the bird is female, a symbol of inhibited womanhood. A jarring detail in line 9 notes, "Her head stinks of its hood, her feathers reek / Of me, that quake at the thunder." The candor of the poet's introspection produces a remarkable list of commands to the falcon, which she bids to "Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost. / But climb." The departure from stricter metrical forms complements earlier works with deliberate pacing that concludes on a resolute double beat.
A similar urge to flee stifling convention dominates "Wild Swans," an earnest, complex, eight-line stanza rhyming abbccbbc. The reversal of positions, bird with woman, places the poet-speaker indoors and the migrating flock overhead. Again, Millay punches out her determination with a double beat and supportive pause when she calls, "Wild swans, come over the town, come over / The town again, trailing your legs and crying." As does the hood in the previous poem, the house stifles with its implications of dreary domesticity, but the poet blames not housewifery, but her "tiresome heart, forever living and dying." Identification with the wild flight transfers the crying to the speaker, who feels compelled to depart and lock the door behind her.
