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From wikipedia:

Many literary references are based on the Barn Swallow’s northward migration as a symbol of spring or summer. The proverb about the necessity for more than one piece of evidence goes back at least to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: “For as one swallow or one day does not make a spring, so one day or a short time does not make a fortunate or happy man.”[51]

The Barn Swallow symbolizes the coming of spring and thus love in the Pervigilium Veneris, a late Latin poem. In “The Waste Land”, T. S. Eliot quoted the line “Quando fiam uti chelidon [ut tacere desinam]?” (“When will I be like the swallow, so that I can stop being silent?”) This refers to a version of the myth of Philomela in which she turns into a Nightingale and her sister Procne into a Swallow; in less familiar versions, the two species are reversed.[55] On the other hand, an image of the assembly of Swallows for their southward migration concludes John Keats’s ode “To Autumn”.

There are mentions of the Barn Swallow in the Bible, although it seems likely that it is confused with the swifts in many translations,[56] or possibly other hirundine species which breed in Israel.[7] However, “Yea, the sparrow hath found her a house, And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young” from Psalms 84:3 likely applies to the Barn Swallow.[56]

The swallow is also notably cited in several of William Shakespeare’s plays for the swiftness of its flight; for example: “True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings …” from Act 5 of Richard III, and “I have horse will follow where the game Makes way, and run like swallows o’er the plain.” from the second act of Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare also references the annual migration of the species poetically in The Winter’s Tale, Act 4: “Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, …”.