The Phoenix

Contents

Lines 105-108 stand in the order 107, 108, 105, 106 in the digital text (editor's transposition); refs follow the first line of each block.

1. 1The poem describes a happy place in the far east, higher than the mountains, untouched by Phaethon's fire and Deucalion's flood.
2. 16In that place there is no death, crime, grief, or storm; a living spring waters the grove twelve times a year and its trees bear unfailing fruit.
3. 31The Phoenix, a unique bird renewed by its own death, lives in the grove as the Sun's attendant and bathes in the spring each dawn before awaiting the sunrise.
4. 45At sunrise the Phoenix sings a song no bird or instrument can match, salutes the sun, and marks the hours of day and night as the Sun's priestess.
5. 59After a thousand years the aged Phoenix leaves its grove for our world of death, flies to Syria, and chooses a tall palm, while Aeolus shuts up the winds.
6. 74In the still air the Phoenix builds a nest that is also a tomb and fills it with spices gathered from Assyria, Arabia, India, and Sheba.
7. 89The Phoenix lies down in its nest, entrusts its soul to the spices, and burns to ashes, from which nature forms a seed and then a milk-white worm.
8. 103The worm becomes an egg-like chrysalis from which the Phoenix emerges, fed only on heavenly dew, until in youth it flies back toward its home.
9. 117Before leaving, the Phoenix embalms the remains of its old body and carries them to the altar in the city of the Sun; the poet begins to describe its colors.
10. 131The poet describes the Phoenix's golden tail, rainbow wings, emerald and white beak, flaming eyes, radiant crown, and scaly golden legs.
11. 145The Phoenix, larger than the ostrich yet swift, is greeted by the people of Egypt, who record its coming in marble, and escorted by all the birds.
12. 159The Phoenix returns to its home; the poem closes by praising the bird that God lets be born of itself, without sexual union, gaining eternal life through death.