“Laistrygonians. Cannibals. Northern Giants. Sasquatch legend. Yep, yep. They are not birds. Not birds of North America.”

Epigraph, The Thorn Birds (1977)
Context: There is a legend about a bird that sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. Dying, it rises above its own agony to out-carol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of the great pain. … Or so says the legend.

Source: The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

the poet at the Ölfus River
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons (1991)

Source: Birds Without Wings

Adverbs (2006), Often

Toll Slowly; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).