[In the following essay, originally published in 1958, Richards closely examines the structure and meaning of The Phoenix and Turtle.]

Is it not fitting that the greatest English poet should have written the most mysterious poem in English? ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ is so strange a poem—even so unlike anything else in Shakespeare, as to have caused doubts that he wrote it. And yet, no one else seems in the least likely as author.

One of the odd things about the poem is that it has engendered curiosity and praise only in relatively recent times. Emerson was among the first: ‘To unassisted readers’, he says, ‘it would appear to be a lament on the death of a poet, and of his poetic mistress.’ ‘This poem,’ he adds, ‘if published for the first time, and without a known author's name, would find no general reception. Only the poets would save it.’

Since then many notable efforts have been made to assist ‘unassisted readers’ without taking us perhaps very much farther than Emerson himself went: ‘a lament on the death of a poet’—or is it the poetic endeavour?—‘and his poetic mistress’—or could it be that whereto the poetic endeavour devotes itself: poetry?

Let us see. Let us read the poem through twice, once for detail and structure and pondering, and then again for life and motion.

THE PHOENIX AND THE TURTLE

Let the bird of lowdest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herauld sad and trumpet be:
To whose sound chaste wings obay.
But thou shriking harbinger,
Foule precurrer of the fiend,
Augour of the feuers end,
To this troupe come thou not neere.
From this Session interdict
Euery foule of tyrant wing,
Saue the Eagle feath'red King,
Keepe the obsequie so strict.
Let the Priest in Surples white,
That defunctive Musicke can,
Be the death-deuining Swan,
Lest the Requiem lacke his right.
And thou treble dated Crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st,
With the breath thou giu'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the Antheme doth commence,
Loue and Constancie is dead,
Phoenix and the Turtle fled,
In a mutuall flame from hence.
So they loued as loue in twaine,
Had the essence but in one,
Two distincts, Diuision none,
Number there in loue was slaine.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance and no space was seene,
Twixt this Turtle and his Queene;
But in them it were a wonder.
So betweene them loue did shine,
That the Turtle saw his right,
Flaming in the Phoenix sight;
Either was the others mine.
Propertie was thus appalled,
That the selfe was not the same:
Single Natures double name,
Neither two nor one was called.
Reason in it selfe confounded,
Saw Diuision grow together,
To themselves yet either neither,
Simple were so well compounded.
That it cried, how true a twaine,
Seemeth this concordant one,
Loue hath Reason, Reason none,
If what parts, can so remaine.
Whereupon it made this Threne
To the Phoenix and the Doue,
Co-supremes and starres of Loue,
As Chorus to their Tragique Scene.

THRENOS

Beautie, Truth, and Raritie,
Grace in all simplicitie,
Here enclosde, in cinders lie.
Death is now the Phoenix nest,
And the Turtles loyall brest,
To eternitie doth rest,
Leauing no posteritie,
Twas not their infirmitie,
It was married Chastitie.
Truth may seeme, but cannot be,
Beautie bragge, but tis not she,
Truth and Beautie buried be.
To this vrne let those repaire,
That are either true or faire,
For these dead Birds, sigh a prayer.

The Phoenix here is a unique bird, singular indeed—there can be but the one Phoenix. And the Turtle Dove is so devoted a lover of his Queen—so entirely hers, as she is his—that, like an Indian suttee, he is consumed, burnt up on the pyre, in the flames of her regeneration.

Let the bird of lowdest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herauld sad and trumpet be:
To whose sound chaste wings obay.

Who is speaking? Who is this ‘bird of lowdest lay’ who summons this company of birds and has this authority over ‘chaste wings’? (You will note, near the end, a very strong use indeed of the word ‘Chastitie’.)

I like best the suggestion that the reborn Phoenix herself is here summoning the birds to the celebration of her own (and the Turtle's) obsequies. If so, this Phoenix, this Queen, is perched on her own throne. In The Tempest (III. iii. 22-24) Sebastian cries:

Now I will believe that … in Arabia
There is one tree, the phoenix' throne; one phoenix
At this hour reigning there.

[On the sole Arabian tree]

If so, she herself is Herauld sad and trumpet; and the sadness is for the Turtle—lost in the fiery rite required for the Phoenix' rebirth.

Various birds are excluded: the ill-omened, the screech-owl, say, because this is a beginning anew, another cycle of the Phoenix' life.

But thou shriking harbinger,
Foule precurrer of the fiend,
Augour of the feuers end,
To this troupe come thou not neere.

Birds of prey are to be kept out too—except the symbol of authority, the Kingly Eagle, which can overawe violence as Henry VII put an end to the Wars of the Roses. Nothing arbitrary or unjust has a place here:

From this Session interdict
Euery foule of tyrant wing,
Saue the Eagle feath'red King,
Keepe the obsequie so strict.

Obsequie is a deep word here: a following after and a due compliance. These birds are to take part in a commemorative procession chanting the anthem, a song with the power of a spell.

Let the Priest in Surples white,
That defunctive Musicke can,
Be the death-deuining Swan,
Lest the Requiem lacke his right.

Defunctive Musicke: music which has to do with death; the Swan knows how to sing its swan song before its death and knows beforehand when it is to die.

Lacke his right: lack a rightness his participation can give. Some dictionaries say right is just Shakespeare's misspelling of rite (ritual). More modern critics will call it a pun. It is better perhaps to reflect and recognize how closely interwoven the meanings of the two words can be. A rite may be the observance it is right to give, to accord.

This choral service contains an anthem, a song of praise and gladness; a requiem, a solemn dirge for the repose of the dead; and a threne or threnos, a lamentation or dirge of honour. Note, too, a curious thing about the structure of the poem: the mourning birds, when assembled and ordered, chant an anthem in which Reason (something being described, talked about, conjured up, released, in the anthem) after going through a strange change, cries out suddenly and then composes the threne, sung at the close, and this threne, so composed

To the Phoenix and the Doue,
Co-supremes and starres of Loue,
As Chorus to their Tragique Scene

ends with directions for a pilgrimage and a prayer.

This singular involvement—each part of the poem being included in and produced by, put into a mouth created in the part before it—has a lot to do with the power and spring of this most concentered and compacted poem.

The next bird, the last of the birds, the only one to be mentioned after the Swan-Priest, may have an importance suited to this special position. The treble dated Crow lives, so the legend says, three times, any number of times, longer than man. A ‘lived happily ever after’ flavour hangs about him. Moreover, he engenders his offspring by breathing: a very ethereal mode of propagation, the mode by which poems and poetic ideas inter-inanimate and beget their successors. He is as black as ink, dressed in proper funeral attire, and yet is directed, somewhat as though he did not belong and could not expect to be invited, to join the mourners. Perhaps, being a carrion crow, he is a kind of contaminated character. Here he is:

And thou treble dated Crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st,
With the breath thou giu'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the Antheme doth commence,
Loue and Constancie is dead,
Phoenix and the Turtle fled,
In a mutuall flame from hence.

Loue and Constancie: the attraction to beauty and the attachment in truth.

Notice is dead: the two are so much one that even from the first mention the verb used is singular: ‘is’ dead, not ‘are’ dead. This confounds grammar, as Reason, itself, is going to be confounded in what follows.

So they loued as loue in twaine,
Had the essence but in one,
Two distincts, Diuision none,
Number there in loue was slaine.

They loved as do two people who love one another, and yet they were not two but one, and one is not a number. For this duality the same questions arise as in the Doctrine of the Trinity.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance and no space was seene,
Twixt this Turtle and his Queene;
But in them it were a wonder.

But in them it were a wonder: in any others than ‘this concordant one’ all this would be ‘a wonder’; not so here.

So betweene them loue did shine,
That the Turtle saw his right,
Flaming in the Phoenix sight;
Either was the others mine.

The Phoenix' eyes are traditionally of fire; they flame like the sun. But, more than that, the Turtle sees his right flaming in them.

His right: all he can ask or be entitled to; all that is due and just; all that he truly is, his true being.

Let me quote a few lines here from The Birds Parliament by Attar, the twelfth-century Persian saint and mystic, also about the Phoenix, which in Attar's poem is the leader in the soul's return to God. The poem is translated by Edward Fitzgerald, who translated Omar Khayyám.

Once more they ventured from the Dust to raise
Their eyes up to the Throne, into the Blaze;
And in the Centre of the Glory there
Beheld the Figure of themselves, as 'twere
Transfigured—looking to Themselves, beheld
The Figure on the Throne enmiracled,
Until their Eyes themselves and that between
Did hesitate which seer was, which seen.

Or as in Shelley's lines from his ‘Hymn of Apollo’:

I am the Eye with which the universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine.

Either was the others mine: diamond mine, ruby mine, yes, perhaps; but, more important, each entirely possessed and was possessed by the other.

Propertie was thus appalled,
That the selfe was not the same:
Single Natures double name,
Neither two nor one was called.
Reason in it selfe confounded,
Saw Diuision grow together,
To themselves yet either neither,
Simple were so well compounded.
That it cried, how true a twaine,
Seemeth this concordant one,
Loue hath Reason, Reason none,
If what parts, can so remaine.

Any other poem, I sometimes think, would have made Reason cry

                                                            How true a one
Seemeth this concordant twain.

But the poem goes the further step, makes Reason in it selfe confounded speak in character and show itself to be confounded. Very Shakespearian, this dramatic actuality!

Whereupon it made this Threne
To the Phoenix and the Doue,
Co-supremes and starres of Loue,
As Chorus to their Tragique Scene.

Note that Reason is the singer:

THRENOS

Beautie, Truth, and Raritie,
Grace in all simplicitie,
Here enclosde, in cinders lie.
Death is now the Phoenix nest,
And the Turtles loyall brest,
To eternitie doth rest,

To the Phoenix, death is now a nest, a symbol of rebirth, but to

the Turtles loyall brest,

it is a place of final repose.

Leauing no posteritie,
Twas not their infirmitie,
It was married Chastitie.

What these

Co-supremes and starres of Loue

have been concerned with has not been offspring. Besides, there can be but the one Phoenix, although in this poem, we may imagine, the sacrifice, the devotion of a Dove is needed for each new regeneration or reincarnation.

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life or of the work,

wrote W. B. Yeats. Must poets give up their lives so that poetry may be renewed?

Truth may seeme, but cannot be,
Beautie bragge, but tis not she,
Truth and Beautie buried be.

As a poem may be something beyond anyone's reading or apprehension of it?

To this vrne let those repaire,
That are either true or faire,
For these dead Birds, sigh a prayer.

This prayer is wordless; it is sighed only, not spoken. What it might have said is what the whole poem has been conveying, an endeavour to apprehend a mystery. And it is no good asking what this mystery is apart from this endeavour itself.

We may say if we like that this mystery is the mystery of being, which is forever dying into cinders and arising to flame and die anew; and always, perhaps, demanding a sacrifice of constancy for the sake of that to which it is loyal and true. But no remarks on this poem can be more than snapshots of something someone has thought he saw in it: helpful maybe to some but merely curiosities of opinion to others.

There are two remarks I would like, however, to make before inviting the reader to read the poem again straight through.

Beautie, Truth, and Raritie.

The truth celebrated in the poem is chiefly loyalty, faithfulness, and constancy, which, as with Troilus, the true knight, the true lover, is truth spelled Troth. At first sight troth may not seem to have very much to do with the ways in which a statement in a science may be true (or false), or evidence offered in a law court may be true (or false), or philosophical or critical or historical or literary views may be true (or false). And yet, for all of these, if we search and imagine faithfully enough, we will find that the statement or opinion, whatever it is, hangs in the midst of and is dependent upon a vast network of loyalties toward everything that may be relevant. Its truth is a matter of inter-inanimations and co-operations among loyalties, among troths.

And very significant parallels to all this hold for beauty.

This poem, one may well think, is not about any such high and remote abstractions but about two people; two people, who may be thought to have been ‘the very personifications, the very embodiments’, as we lightly say, of beauty and truth, though they are spoken of in the poem as two birds. That is how the poem feels, no doubt about it. But, as certainly, there is a religious quality in its movement, a feeling in it as though we were being related through it to something far beyond any individuals. This Phoenix and this Turtle have a mythic scale to them, as though through them we were to become participants in something ultimate. All this, however, is so handled that it seems as easy and as natural and as necessary as breathing.

Let us read the poem again with a wider and more relaxed attention. Was it Mr. Eliot who remarked: ‘There is such a thing as page fright as well as stage fright’? The very greatness of a poem can stupefy the reader.

To this vrne let those repaire. …

No one who repairs to this urn will think there can be any end to wondering about it.