The Phoenix and the Turtle Flaming in the Phoenix' sight:
Either was the other's mine.
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Let the bird of loudest lay Property was thus appalled
On the sole Arabian tree That the self was not the same; Herald sad and trumpet be, Single nature's double name To whose sound chaste wings obey. Neither two nor one was called.
But thou shrieking harbinger, Reason, in itself confounded,
Foul precurrer of the fiend, Saw division grow together, Augur of the fever's end, To themselves yet either neither, To this troop come thou not near. Simple were so well compounded;
From this session interdict That it cried, "How true a twain
Every fowl of tyrant wing, Seemeth this concordant one! Save the eagle, feather'd king; Love has reason, reason none, Keep the obsequy so strict. If what parts can so remain."
Let the priest in surplice white, Whereupon it made this threne
That defunctive music can, To the Phoenix and the Dove, Be the death-divining swan, Co-supremes and stars of love, Lest the requiem lack his right. As chorus to their tragic scene:
And thou treble-dated crow, THRENOS
That thy sable gender mak'st With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st, Beauty, truth, and rarity, 'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go. Grace in all simplicity, Here enclos'd, in cinders lie. Here the anthem doth commence: Love and constancy is dead; Death is now the Phoenix' nest, Phoenix and the Turtle fled And the Turtle's loyal breast In a mutual flame from hence. To eternity doth rest,
So they lov'd, as love in twain Leaving no posterity:
Had the essence but in one; 'Twas not their infirmity, Two distincts, division none: It was married chastity. Number there in love was slain. Truth may seem but cannot be; Hearts remote, yet not asunder; Beauty brag but 'tis not she; Distance and no space was seen Truth and beauty buried be. 'Twixt this Turtle and his queen: To this urn let those repair But in them it were a wonder. That are either true or fair; For these dead birds sigh a prayer.
The Victories Of Love: "To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light."