Some fisherman, perhaps plying with his quivering rod, some shepherd leaning on his staff, or a peasant bent over his plough handle caught sight of them as they flew past and stood stock still in astonishment, believing that these creatures who could fly through the air must be gods. Ovid

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The artist has choosen to show the moment when Icarus splashes in the Aegean sea. It is the first flight in history. The work is in constrast to the description of the flight by Ovid. Only the legs of Icarus are seen, the farmer and shepherd do not even notice the event. This work and the story of Icarus and Daedalus has inspired some poets.

Musee des Beaux Arts 1938
W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.