White Heron. Maurice Thompson thus describes the shooting of a white heron:
“Like twenty serpents bound together,
Hissed the flying arrow’s feather.
A thud, a puff, a feathery ring,
A quick collapse, a quivering--
A whirl, a headlong downward dash,
A heavy fall, a sullen plash,
And, like white foam, or giant flake
Of snow, he lay upon the lake!”
Maurice Thompson, The Death of the White Heron, Songs of Fair Weather (1883).