The Phoenix and the Turtle is certainly a strange and difficult poem. To unassisted readers, it would appear to be a lament on the death of a poet, and of his poetic mistress. But the poem is so quaint, and so charming in diction, tone, and allusions, as in its perfect metre and harmony, that I for one would be sad to have its meaning ever explained. I consider this piece a good example of the rule that there is a poetry for poets proper, as well as a poetry for the world of readers. This poem, if published for the first time, and without a known author's name, would find no general reception. Only the poets would save it.
The Phoenix and the Turtle is William Shakespeare's darkest allegory of love. It celebrates a marriage in tones more appropriate to a funeral. It talks of love in terms of perfection, and of perfection in terms of a love that is transcendental and sublime without ever ceasing to be physical. Its distillation of the nature of self-hood in love (Either was the other's mine) reminds me of such things as John Donne's The Ecstasy, which I know that Mr Shakespeare read in manuscript when it was circulating in the Inns of Court. Donne's obscurities are mere smoke, though, compared with the blazing bonfire of Shakespeare's thought here. The poem is such a pure, such a concentrated mystery that we ought just to point out the simple things that can be said about it, before submitting our minds to the power of its music. All but six of its sixty-seven lines are in truncated trochaic tetrameters; the other six employ the final syllable of the trochaic line. The only action takes place in the sixth stanza, where the two birds flee away together. All the rest of the poem is preparation for this action and comment upon it. The birds are a female phoenix and a male turtle dove. Here is the poem:
Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer 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,
Save the eagle, feath'red king;
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st,
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'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.
So they lov'd as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
Twixt this turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.
So between them love did shine
That the turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix' sight:
Either was the other's mine.
Property was thus appall'd,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was call'd.
Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together,
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.
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
To eternity, doth rest,
Leaving no posterity:
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.
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;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.
This is my favourite of all William Shakespeare's poems outside of his plays. I do not understand it, but I know what it means. I have copied it out now in my own handwriting because that is something I always like to do. If you copy out The Phoenix and the Turtle in your own handwriting you discover that you know what it means, even though you do not understand it. I recommend the exercise to every reader.
Spiritual ecstasy is the only key to work of this kind. To the reader without that key it can only be so many strange words set in a noble rhythm for no apparent cause.
Poetry moves in many ways. It may glorify and make spiritual some action of man, or it may give to thoughts such life as thoughts can have, an intenser and stranger life than man knows, with forms that are not human and a speech unintelligible to normal human moods. This poem gives to a flock of thoughts about the passing of truth and beauty the mystery and vitality of birds, who come from a far country, to fill the mind with their crying.
Yet, human nature being what it is, basic and obstinate questions remain. Who was the phoenix? And who the turtle? And if we knew, would we know or understand the poem any better?
I have heard men say that The Phoenix and the Turtle refers to the love of Elizabeth and Essex, but I cannot for the life of me see how. It seems even less likely that it refers to WS and Rizley, and I do not see myself in the part of either bird. For what it is worth a number of Sir John Salusbury's own acrostic lyrics, included in Love's Martyr, make it clear that he was at least as much in love with his wife's sister Dorothy Halsall as he was with his wife. It is just possible that Dorothy Halsall is the phoenix and John Salusbury the turtle celebrated by all the poets in the book, including Shakespeare. Such a secret and forbidden love would at least explain the obscurity which cloaks all the poems, as well as the fact that all the poets seem to know who they are talking about. Dorothy may have been one of those women in whom the divine is sometimes felt to be incarnate. Never forget that it is Beatrice, not Virgil, who guides Dante through Paradise.