on owls...and night owls

c. AD I5 OVID 

Ibis Il. 223-4.

The owl of the night sat on an opposite house-top, and uttered his ill-boding notes with funereal voice.

c.1374 CHAUCER, Geoffrey

Parliament of Fowls l. 343.

The oule ek, that of deth the bode bryngeth.

C.1595 SHAKESPEARE, William

Midsommer Nights Dreame v i. 

Whil'st the scritch-owle, scritching loud, 

Puts the wretch that lies in woe, 

In remembrance of a shrowd.

I623 DELONEY, Thomas 

Thomas of Reading xI. 

With that the scritch owle cried piteously .. lesu haue mercy pon me (quoth hee) what an ill fauoured cry doe yonder carrion birds make, and therewithall he laid him downe in his bed, from whence he neuer rose againe.

1967 MARSHALL, Sybil

Fenland Chronicle pt. 2 1x. 

If an owl sat on the roof, or flew up against a window at night, that meant a death actually in the house.

1725 BOURNE, Henry

Antiquitates Vulgares, or the Antiquities of the Common People: Giving an Account of Several of Their Opinions and Ceremonies 70-1. 

Omens and prognostications...are still in the Mouths of all, tho only observed by the Vulgar. In Country Places, especially they are in great Repute...If an Owl, which they reckon a most abominable and unlucky Bird, sends forth its hoarse and dismal Voice, it is an Omen of the Approach of some terrible Thing; that some dire Calamity...is near at Hand.

I829 BROCKETT, John Trotter

North Country Words I61. 

Howlet, the barn or white owl...has the reputation of being the herald of horror and disaster.

1872 Bye-Gones 18 Sept. 86 [Llansaintffraid-yn-Mechan, Monmouth.] 

Its visits and wild shriekings foretell the death of someone in the neighbourhood. It has thus gained the name of death-bird or 'Aderyn y corph'.

I994 CLEMENT, Catherine 

Syncope: The Philosophy of Rapture

From "The Owl and the nightingale: Hegel and Holderlin" 

The philosopher, however, is a strange bird. During the day, while others work and live, God alone knows what the philosopher is doing: he dreams, he faints, perhaps he sleeps...One never knows. But when his peers go off to bed, the philosopher, like a methodical depressive, a true register of anguish, opens his eyes and starts to keep watch

I994 CLEMENT, Catherine

Syncope: The Philosophy of Rapture

From "The Owl and the nightingale: Hegel and Holderlin" 

The philosopher, alas, will always keep watch too late. Any co-incidence with any event whatsoever is impossible: or rather, unthinkable. Thought cannot be anything but twilight; it is at nightfall that their eyes open, to watch, fixedly, what still remains hazy in the gray shadows

2023 RADIM, Jeremy 

Evening (poem)

Another word I love is evening
for the balance it implies, balance
being something I struggle with.
I suppose I would like to be more
a planet, turning in & out of light
It comes down again to polarities,
equilibrium. Evening. The moths
take the place of the butterflies,
owls the place of hawks, coyotes
for dogs, stillness for business,
& the great sorrow of brightness
makes way for its own sorrow.
Everything dances with its strict
negation, & I like that. I have no
choice but to like that. Systems
are evening out all around us—
even now, as we kneel before
a new & ruthless circumstance.
Where would I like to be in five
years, someone asks—& what
can I tell them? Surrendering
with grace to the evening, with
as much grace as I can muster
to the circumstance of darkness,
which is only something else
that does not stay.