Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,

There is one tree, the phoenix' throne; one phoenix At this hour reigning there," and Ant. and Cleop., III, ii, 12: "O thou Arabian bird!" See, too, Roydon's elegy on Sir Philip Sidney:

"And that which was of wonder most,

The Phoenix left sweet Araby;
And on a cedar in this coast
Built up a tomb of spicery."

The fable of the phoenix seems first to have been told by Herodotus, and is found in Ovid, Metam, xv, 391-407. Only one of the species is supposed to live at one time. In due course it is consumed by fire and out of its ashes a successor springs. A phoenix is one of the two subjects of the present elegy. The opening apostrophe to "the bird of loudest lay," who is to act as "herald and trumpet " at the funeral, cannot, therefore, refer to the dead bird, but must prematurely presume a successor. The construction of the poem is too vague and indeterminate to permit any quite logical interpretation. In Rosalins Complaint, st. xiv, the tongue of the phoenix is described as "the utterer of all glorious things, The silver clapper of that golden bell."

5 shrieking harbinger] apparently the screech owl. Cf. Macb., II, ii, 3: "It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman," and Mids. N. Dr., V, i, 365–367: "Whilst the screech owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud." The vocabulary in the text somewhat resembles Hamlet, I, i, 121-123: “ And even the like precurse of fierce events, As harbingers preceding still the fates, And prologue to the omen coming on.”

11 the eagle, feather'd king] Cf. Roydon's elegy: "the sky-bred eagle royal bird," and

"The Eagle marked with piercing sight

The mournful habit of the place,

And parted thence with mounting flight,
To signify to Jove the case."

14 That defunctive music can] That is skilled in funeral music.

20

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 givest and takest,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;

Phoenix and the turtle fled

In a mutual flame from hence.

15 the death-divining swan] Cf. Roydon's elegy: "The swan that sings, about to die," and

"The swan that was in presence here

Began his funeral dirge to sing."

17 treble-dated] thrice as long-lived as a human being. The long life of the crow is a commonplace of Greek and Latin poetry. But the classical poets differ as to the number of times its life exceeds that of man. Hesiod gave the ratio as nine to one, Aristophanes (Birds, 610) as five to one, Ausonious, Idyll ix, wrote "Et totiens trino cornix vivacior aevo." To Lucretius' words "cornicum ut saecla vetusta' (V. 1084) Steevens added the words "ter tres aetates humanos garrula vincit Cornix" as though they were part of Lucretius' text, but they do not figure there, although Steevens' error has been universally accepted by the commentators.

18 gender] race or kind. Cf. Othello, I, iii, 323: “one gender of herbs.” 19 With the breath thou givest and takest] The uncouth line seems to

mean that the crow first gives breath or birth to its young, and then provides support for its offspring by taking breath from, or feeding on, other creatures.

23 the turtle] turtle dove. At line 50, infra, the bird is called "the dove." Cf. Roydon's elegy:

"The turtle by him never stirred

Example of immortal love."

32 But in them it were a wonder] Except in these two birds, this indivisible union would excite wonder.

34 his right] Thus the original text. Steevens suggests light. But cf. Sonnet cxvii, 6:"your own dear purchased right," and 1 Hen. IV, II, iii, 42: " 'my treasures and my rights of thee." In both these places "right" means the "title" which the lover enjoys in the object of his love.

37 Property] Individuality, personal identity. The verse suggests the fear that personal identity would be merged in an indistinguishable community or mass of humanity.

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.

43 either neither] Malone quotes Drayton's Mortimeriados, 1596, st. cccxl: "fire seemed to be water, water flame, Either or neither, and yet both the same."

45-46 That it cried .. concordant one] Malone again quotes Mortimeriados, 1596, st. clxvii:

'Still in her breast his secret thought she bears,
Nor can her tongue pronounce an I, but we;
Thus two in one, and one in two they be;
And as his soul possesseth head and heart,

She's all in all, and all in every part."

47-48 Love hath reason

so remain] Love is reasonable; reason is folly, if the things which are parted or divided from one another yet remain united and undivided.

49 threne] dirge, musical lament, from the Greek Opvos, a funeral song. Cf. Kendall's Flowers of Epigrammes, 1577 (Spenser Soc., p. 157): "Of verses, threnes and epitaphs, Full fraught with tears of teene." Kendall is translating a Latin epitaph on Budæus by Beza who merely employs the words "maestis carminibus." The last poem in Kendall's collection is headed Threnodia (i. e., threnody).

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THRENOS

Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,

Here enclosed in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:
'T was not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 't is 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.

THRENOS] The Greek word (@pĥvos) for funeral dirge.

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