How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #1
[…] at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it. (7-8)
Flight is the very image of freedom: all that open air, and the wind beneath your (literal, in this case) wings. Ask anybody what their favorite dream is, and it's the flying one, right? No wonder the bird gets to relive his former glory days in his dreams. But, of course, the truth of dawn smacks reality in his little avian face.
Quote #2
We had fed him for six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, (22-23)
What can you give an animal that pretty much symbolizes freedom? When he's injured, and has lost it, you can give him the freedom to roam—in death.
Quote #3
[…] but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality. (26-28)
"Unsheathed from reality," this hawk's spirit rushes out so startling and fierce that the night-herons scream. It's finally freed from its lame duck body, and it gets to fulfill that flying dream forever in death.