“All that was dim and  drowsy in the Cossacks’ minds flew away in a twinkling: their hearts fluttered like birds.  The farther they penetrated the steppe, the more  beautiful it became... The air was  filled with the notes of a thousand different birds.  On high hovered the hawks, their wings outspread,  and their eyes fixed intently on the grass. The cries  of a flock of wild ducks, ascending from one side,  were echoed from God knows what distant lake.  From the grass arose, with measured sweep, a gull,  and skimmed wantonly through blue waves of air.  And now she has vanished on high, and appears  only as a black dot: now she has turned her wings,  and shines in the sunlight. Oh, steppes, how beautiful you are!”

— Taras Bulba, Nikolai Gogol