Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

The Phœnix and the Turtle

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

LET the bird of loudest lay,

On the sole Arabian tree,

Herald sad and trumpet be,

To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou shrieking harbinger,

Foul precurrer of the fiend,

Augur of the fever’s end,

To this troop come thou not near!

From this session interdict

Every fowl of tyrant wing,

Save the eagle, feathered king:

Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,

That defunctive music can,

Be the death-divining swan,

Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou treble-dated crow,

That thy sable gender makest

With the breath thou giv’st and takest,

’Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence;

Love and constancy is dead;

Phœnix and the turtle fled

In a mutual flame from hence.

So they loved, as love in twain

Had the essence but in one;

Two distincts, division none:

Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder;

Distance, and no space was seen

’Twixt the turtle and his queen:

But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine,

That the turtle saw his right

Flaming in the phœnix’ sight;

Either was the other’s mine.

Property was thus appalled,

That the self was not the same;

Single nature’s double name

Neither two nor one was called.

Reason, in itself confounded,

Saw division grow together,

To themselves yet either neither,

Simple were so well compounded,

That it cried, ‘How true a twain

Seemeth this concordant one!

Love hath reason, reason none,

If what parts can so remain.’

Whereupon it made this threne

To the phœnix and the dove,

Co-supremes and stars of love,

As chorus to their tragic scene.

Beauty, truth, and rarity,

Grace in all simplicity,

Here enclosed in cinders lie.

Death is now the phœnix’ nest;

And the turtle’s loyal breast

To eternity doth rest.

Leaving no posterity:

’Twas not their infirmity,

It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be;

Beauty brag, but ’tis not she;

Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair

That are either true or fair;

For these dead birds sigh a prayer.