Audubon’s birds, this is to say, are the stern celestials Warren himself celebrates in "Evening Hawk" and "The Leaf," those not-angels who know everything but mercy, of which they neither feel nor see the need, and who stand outside of time even as their motion is the motion of time’s ruthlessness. …

The bird of prey is not an emblem by means of which the necessity it embodies may be examined. If it stands for anything it stands for that contempt with which necessity spurns comprehension.