“Where the star whirls, where the wave rears,

where everything flees!

I see the tombs, the nests,

the thicket, the mountain, and the harsh granites,

the shapeless ankyloses of the old skeleton-world,

the vague plain opening its pale flowers,

the immeasurable waves uttering long howls,

and the hideous gestures of the trees in the woods.

And from below there reaches me a music, obscure,

the hymn that Epicurus heard after Hermes;

everything vibrates, and everything becomes an instrument;

the desert sings, and the forest gives to the fierce concert

its sonorous and sad branches,

and the ship its rigging, which the wind makes into a dark lyre.”

Victor Hugo, 1856