Following strong alliterated b sounds in Boulder/blunted/beds/ break/below, section III looks into the past, when Indians "Paid something for the future / Luck of the country." The irony of luck prefaces another burst of bs as the poet-speaker asks that the "Beautiful country burn again." In the final segment, the poet identifies the work of the poet, "to bring the savor / From the bruised root." The characterization accounts for the troubled dreamer, who tortures himself to perform "the ways of my love."
Jeffers' identification with nature in a narrative, "Hurt Hawks" (1928), creates a palpable tragedy as a wing-damaged bird hobbles about, dragging one wing while contemplating slow starvation. As though honoring a fallen titan, the poet-speaker anticipates death as a form of divine blessing. With a stern Old Testament misanthropy, the poet comments that, in contrast with the humble bird, humanity has grown too arrogant for such grace. Distanced from God by choice, human sufferers deserve a graceless fate.
In the second half, the poet looks candidly at the choice between euthanizing a bird or a man. After six weeks of feeding the crippled hawk, he chooses to honor its unspoken request for release. With a "lead gift in the twilight," he frees the redtail. Its once-noble frame crumples into "Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers" as the spirit flies upward, "quite unsheathed from reality."
