The Phoenix and the Turtle
William Shakespeare 








The Phoenix and Turtle is Shakespeare's allegorical poem on the mystical nature of love. 

The poem tells of the funeral of two lovers the phoenix, a mythological bird associated with immortality, and the turtledove (usually called "turtle" in Elizabethan English), a symbol of fidelity. The two birds have burned themselves to death in order to be forever joined in love. The allegory celebrates an ideal of love in which an absolute spiritual union of the lovers, defying rationality and common sense is chastely achieved through death, the ultimate refection of the world.






The Phoenix and the Turtle

William Shakespeare


		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, feather'd 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 mak'st



		With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,



		'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.







		So they lov'd, 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 phoenix' sight;



		Either was the other's mine.







		Property was thus appall'd,



		That the self was not the same;



		Single nature's double name



		Neither two nor one was call'd.







		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 phoenix and the dove,



		Co-supremes and stars of love,



		As chorus to their tragic scene.







THRENOS.

		Beauty, truth, and rarity,



		Grace in all simplicity,



		Here enclos'd in cinders lie.







		Death is now the phoenix' 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…








    

William Shake-Speare.