it is where the great magnolia shoots up its majestic trunk, crowned with evergreen leaves, and decorated with a thousand beautiful flowers, that perfume the air around; where the forests and fields are adorned with blossoms of every hue; where the golden orange ornaments with gardens and groves; where bignonias of various kinds interlace their climbing stems around the white-flowered stuartia, and mounting still higher, cover the summits of the lofty trees around, accompanied with innumerable vines, that here and there festoon the dense foliage of the magnificent woods, lending to the vernal breeze a slight portion of the perfume of their clustered flowers, where a genial warmth seldom forsakes the atmosphere; where berries and fruits of all descriptions are met with at every step;- in a word, kind reader, it is where nature seems to have paused, as when passed over the earth, and opening her stores, to have strewed with unsparing hand the diversified seeds from which have sprung all the beautiful and splendid forms which i should in vain attempt to describe, that the mocking bird should have fixed its abode, there only that its wondrous song should be heard.
the mocking bird - turdus polyglottus - john james audobon - writings and drawings - the library of america - 1999
(images by johannes von vogelbaum, of tree light, tree sounds and murmurs from the perspective of a small invisible bird)
2 comments:
stewartia
being unlearned in ornithology, i like very much that the bird is a "polyglot", one of my favourite words.
not just for:
- able to speak or write several languages; multilingual
or more bird-like:
-a mixture or confusion of languages
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