So they loved, as love in twain Hearts remote, yet not asunder; So between them love did shine, 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, That it cried, How true a twain Whereupon it made this threne THE PHENIX AND TURTLE' 275 Stanza 1, line 1: line 2 THRENOS. Beauty, Truth, and Rarity, Here enclosed, in cinders lie. Death is now the Phoenix' nest; Leaving no posterity: Truth may seem, but cannot be; To this urn let those repair For these dead birds sigh a prayer. bird of loudest lay.-Probably no particular bird is meant. Stanza 2, line 1: shrieking harbinger.-The screech-owl. Steevens. (Variorum ed. 1821. xx. 422) quotes Midsummer Night's Dream, (v. i. 382-5):— 'Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud.' Stanza 5, line 1: treble-dated crow.-Steevens (Variorum ed. 1821, xx. 422) quotes Lucretius: -'cornicum ut secla vetusta. Ter tres ætates humanas garrula vincit Cornix.' line 2: That thy sable gender mak'st.—'It is a "vulgar error" still that 66 the crow can change its gender at will.' (Grosart.) Matthew Roydon in his elegy on Sir Philip Sidney, appended to Spenser's Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, 1595, describes the part figuratively played in Sidney's obsequies by the turtle-dove, swan, phoenix, and eagle, in verses that very closely resemble Shakespeare's account of the funereal functions fulfilled by the same four birds in his contribution to Chester's volume.' (Lee, Life, p. 184.) Roydon's poem is reprinted in editions of Spenser's works. |