Quotation
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane
These are the first lines of the poem "Pale Fire" by "John Shade", a fictional poet created by Vladimir Nabokov, for his novel Pale Fire.
The line "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain" was also used in the song "The Obituaries" by the band The Menzingers.
The waxwing identified in the Commentary to Pale Fire is a fictitious species. The novel's narrator claims that John Shade's father had a waxwing named for him, Bombycilla Shadei, and in noting the name corrects the taxonomical error: '(this should be shadei, of course)'.
In the song "Autumn" by Joanna Newsom, waxwings are mentioned.
When out of the massing that bodes and bides
In the cold West
Flew a waxwing who froze and died against my breast
And all the while rain like a weed in the tide swans and lists
Down on the gossiping lawn, saying, "tsk, tsk, tsk"
Read more about this topic: Waxwing
Famous quotes containing the word quotation:
“It is an old error of man to forget to put quotation marks where he borrows from a woman’s brain!”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)