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my favorite Audubon's:
The Raven
A bird not perched upon a pallid bust of Pallas above a chamber door but a hickory tree. This portrait came 12 years before the famous poem by Poe. Audubon knew better where to find them, he writes:
"Their usual places of resort are the mountains, the abrupt banks of rivers, the rocky shores of lakes, and the cliffs of thinly-peopled or deserted islands ... There, through the clear and rarefied atmosphere, the Raven spreads his glossy wings and tail, and, as he onward sails, rises higher and higher each bold sweep that he makes, as if conscious that the nearer he approaches the sun, the more splendent will become the tints of his plumage.”
"Their usual places of resort are the mountains, the abrupt banks of rivers, the rocky shores of lakes, and the cliffs of thinly-peopled or deserted islands ... There, through the clear and rarefied atmosphere, the Raven spreads his glossy wings and tail, and, as he onward sails, rises higher and higher each bold sweep that he makes, as if conscious that the nearer he approaches the sun, the more splendent will become the tints of his plumage.”
By Audubon the naturalist, from his Ornithological Biography.
On January 20, a complete first edition boxed-set of Audubon's The Birds of America including his five-volume Ornithological Biography will be auctioned in New York at Christie's. There are only 120 known copies of this huge work. As big as a coffee table, weighing over 200 pounds, it contains 435 hand-colored engravings (depicting 497 species) printed on handmade paper measuring 29.5 X 39.5 inches. Assembled into four volumes, it's massive.
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore /For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore/Nameless here for evermore.
Speaking of the early 1800s, just in case you are a fan of the poem by Edgar Allan Poe as am I, here's a link to a reading by American actor Christopher Walken.
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