echo

Everything in the Universe is an echo. If the birds, in the opinion of certain dreaming linguists, are the first creators of sound who inspired men, they themselves imitated nature's voices. Quinet, who listened for so long to the voice of Bourgogne and Bresse, discovers "the lapping on the shores in the nasal cry of aquatic birds, the frog's croaking in the brook ouzel, the whistling of the reed in the bullfind, the cry of the tempest in the frigate bird." Where did the night birds borrow the trembling, thrilling sounds which seem the repercussion of a subterranean echo in old ruins? "Thus all the sounds of natural scenes—still life or animated—have their echo and their counterpart in living nature."

-- Gaston Bachelard Water and Dreams
Translated by Edith R. Farrell