EVENING EBB

The ocean has not been so quiet for a long while; five night-herons
Fly shorelong voices in the hush of the air
Over the calm of an ebb that almost mirrors their wings.
The sun has gone down, and the water has gone down
From the weed-clad rock, but the distant cloud-wall rises. The ebb whispers.
Great cloud-shadows float in the opal water.
Through rifts in the screen of the world pale gold gleams and the evening
Star suddenly glides like a flying torch.
As if we had not been meant to see her; rehearsing behind
The screen of the world for another audience.

Robinson Jeffers

Tame pigeons, which are pampered by high feeding, and lie perhaps under more frequent temptations from living together in crowds, are apt to forget the rules of strict chastity, and follow too often the example of people in high life.

Gilbert White, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, 1789

When the wild ducks or the wild geese migrate in their season, a strange tide rises in the territories over which they sweep. As if magnetized by the great triangular flight, the barnyard fowl leap a foot or two into the air and try to fly. The call of the wild strikes them with the force of a harpoon and a vestige of savagery quickens their blood. All the ducks on the farm are transformed for an instant into migrant birds, and into those hard little heads, till now filled with humble images of pools and worms and barnyards, there swims a sense of continental expanse, of the breadth of seas and the salt taste of the ocean wind.

Antoine de Saint Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars

All I want to say, is right here, in my hand...