es no more on vanity shall feed,
But sealed up with death, shall have their deadly meed."

It was a common notion that if a dove was let loose with its eyes so
closed it would fly straight upwards, continuing to mount till it fell
down through mere exhaustion.[241]

[241] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. pp. 777, 778; cf. Beaumont
and Fletcher, "Philaster," v. 1.

In "Cymbeline" (iii. 4), Imogen, referring to Posthumus, says:

"I grieve myself
To think, when thou shalt be disedged by her
That now thou tir'st on,"--

this passage containing two metaphorical expressions from falconry. A
bird was said to be _disedged_ when the keenness of its appetite was
taken away by _tiring_, or feeding upon some tough or hard substance
given to it for that purpose. In "3 Henry VI." (i. 1), the king says:

"that hateful duke,
Whose haughty spirit, winged with desire,
Will cost my crown, and like an empty eagle
Tire on the flesh of me and of my son."

In "Timon of Athens" (iii. 6), one of the lords says: "Upon that were
my thoughts tiring, when we encountered."

In "Venus and Adonis," too, we find a further allusion:

"Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone," etc.

Among other allusions to the hawk may be mentioned one in "Measure for
Measure" (iii. 1):

"This outward-sainted deputy,
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth _emmew_,
As falcon doth the fowl"

--the word "emmew" signifying the place where hawks were shut up during
the time they moulted. In "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 4), Lady Capulet says
of Juliet:

"To-night she's mew'd up to her heaviness;"

and in "Taming of the Shrew" (i. 1), Gremio, speaking of Bianca to
Signor Baptista, says: "Why will you mew her?"

When the wing or tail feathers of a hawk were dropped, forced out, or
broken, by any accident, it was usual to supply or repair as many as
were deficient or damaged, an operation called "to imp[242] a hawk."
Thus, in "Richard II." (ii. 1), Northumberland says:

"If, then, we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
Imp out our drooping country's broken wing."

[242] Imp, from Anglo-Saxon, _impan_, to graft. Turbervile has
a whole chapter on "The way and manner how to ympe a hawke's
feather, howsoever it be broken or bruised."