The deer were bounding like blown leaves <br />Under the smoke in front the roaring wave of the brush-fire; <br />I thought of the smaller lives that were caught. <br />Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror <br />Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned <br />Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle <br />Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine, <br />Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders <br />He had come from far off for the good hunting <br />With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless <br />Blue, and the hills merciless black, <br />The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them. <br />I thought, painfully, but the whole mind, <br />The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than mercy.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fire-on-the-hills/
