Title:
Phoenix mythical bird that was thought to be consumed in flame and reborn in its own ashes, symbol of immortality; here regarded as female, though traditionally of both sexes.
Turtle turtledove, symbol of constancy in love; here regarded as male (line 31)
1 the bird … lay the bird (possibly the nightingale) of loudest song
2 sole Arabian tree (The phoenix was thought to build its nest in a unique tree in Arabia.)
3 sad solemn.
trumpet trumpeter
4 chaste wings i.e., the wings of the good birds that are being summoned.
obey are obedient.
5 shrieking harbinger i.e., screech owl
6 precurrer forerunner
7 Augur … end i.e., prognosticator of death
10 fowl … wing bird of prey
14 That … can that is skilled in funereal music
15 death-divining swan (Alludes to the belief that the swan foresees its own death and sings when it is about to die.)
16 his right its proper ceremony, or, its proper due. (Referring either to the requiem or to the swan.)
17 treble-dated i.e., living thrice the normal span
18–19 That … tak’st (Compare with Hortus Sanitatis, Bk. 3, sec. 34, in Seager’s Natural History in Shakespeare’s Time: “They [ravens] are said to conceive and to lay eggs at the bill. The young become black on the seventh day.”)
sable gender black offspring
25 So … as They so loved that
27 distincts separate or individual persons or things
28 Number … slain i.e., their love, being of one essence, paradoxically renders the very concept of number meaningless; “one [in the numerological tradition] is no number.”
32 But … wonder this phenomenon, had it been seen anywhere but in them, would have seemed amazing.
33 So In such a way
34 his right his true nature, what pertained uniquely and rightly to him, or, what was due to him
35 sight eyes
36 mine i.e., very own. (The phoenix and turtle are so merged in one another’s identity that each contains the other’s being. Mine also suggests “source of each other’s treasure.”)
37–8 Property … same i.e., The very idea of a peculiar or essential quality was thus confounded by the paradoxical revelation here that each lover’s identity was merged into the other’s and was no longer itself
39–40 Single … called i.e., their nature was at once so single and double that it could not properly be called either one or two.
41–4 Reason … compounded i.e., Reason, which proceeds by making discriminations between separate entities, is confounded when it beholds a paradoxical union of such entities, each at once discrete and fused into a single being, at once a simple (i.e., made of one substance) and a compound
45 it i.e., Reason
47–8 Love … remain i.e., Love represents a higher reason than reason itself owing to its embodiment of the paradoxical unity of two in one.
49 threne lamentation, funeral song. (From Greek threnos.)
51 Co-supremes joint rulers
53 truth constancy in love. (Also in line 62.)
55 enclosed i.e., enclosed in this urn (line 65)
58 To eternity for all eternity
60–1 ’Twas … chastity i.e., it was not a defect in them to leave no posterity, but an emblem of their mystical eternal trothplight.
62–4 Truth … be Anything calling itself fidelity or beauty is only a shadow or approximation of the metaphysical reality hinted at in those words.