Shakespeare Title variant: "The bird of the loudest lay"
Online Critical Edition in Progress - Version 1.a.
Shakespeare Network - https://shakespearenetwork.net/
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Poem
Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
Shakespeare
But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near!
Shakespeare
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Shakespeare
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
Shakespeare
And thou treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender makest
With the breath thou givest and takest,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Shakespeare
Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.
Shakespeare
So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.
Shakespeare
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
'Twixt the turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.
Shakespeare
So between them love did shine,
That the turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix' sight;
Either was the other's mine.
Shakespeare
Property was thus appalled,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was called.
Shakespeare
Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together,
To themselves yet either neither,
Simple were so well compounded,
Shakespeare
That it cried, How true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none,
If what parts can so remain.
Shakespeare
Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supremes and stars of love,
As chorus to their tragic scene.
