The Windhover is the Kestrel, a small European hawk, somewhat resembling the American sparrow-hawk. In the poem under review we have the literal image of a falcon in flight. The poem has received both approval and disapproval of critics.
The major success of the poem lies in the opening account of the Bird itself.Here ,in contrast with "Harry Ploughman" , technique is the servant of vision, and once the grammatical structure of the lines is grasped, the distortion of natural speech order ceases to disturb. The poet conveys both the objective movements of the Bird , and his own joyous participation in its mastery of flight. But Hopkins is unable to let the Bird merely be, he seems to be unable to enjoy any intense sensuous experience without justifying it by moral reflection.There is certainly nothing wrong about this,but in Hopkins poetry the vividness of natural description has the effect of making the philosophical moralising appear crude and mechanical.Whereas in "spring and Fall" Hopkins enables the reader to share the emotional and intellectual drama which leads to the conclusion, in " The Windhover" the philosophical ending bears little relation to the opening of the sestet is a plea or a plain statement ,it is clear that no attempt at the kind of reflection found in " Spring and Fall" is being made. The latter is written in the present tense it could almost be a piece of dialogue from a poetic drama ." The Windhover" is an attempt to endow with moral significance an experience which according to Hawkins description,had little of the moral in it at the time it took place
Obviously the poem is somewhat difficult to grasp and the charge of obscurity is quite tenable in this case. This 'obscurity'is the direct result of distortion in diction and rhythm.
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