THE PHOENIX AND TURTLE. (From the additional poems to CHESTER's Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint, 1601.) LET the bird of loudest lay, To whose sound chaste wings obey. But thou, shrieking harbinger, Foul pre-currer 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, Let the priest in surplice white, And thou, treble-dated crow, That thy sable gender mak'st With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st, Here the anthem doth commence :- In a mutual flame from hence So they lov'd, as love in twain 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. Property was thus appall'd, Reason, in itself confounded, That it cried, how true a twain Whereupon it made this threne 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 Leaving no posterity:- 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; THE END. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSCN AND CO |