Fire on the Hills by Robinson Jeffers

   The deer were bounding like blown leaves

   Under the smoke in front of the roaring wave of the brush-fire;

   I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.

   Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror

   Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned

   Down the black slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle

   Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,

   Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders.

   He had come from far off for the good hunting

   With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless

   Blue, and the hills merciless black,

   The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.

    I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,

   The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than

                      mercy.