The Phoenix

There is a place, blessed in the far east,

Where the great gate of the eternal sky lies open;

Not near the summer or winter risings,

But where the Sun pours forth the day from the vernal axis.

There a plain spreads out its open expanse:

No hillock rises, no hollow valley gapes.

But that place overtops our mountains, whose summits are thought lofty,

By twice six ells.

Here is the grove of the Sun: a wood planted with many a tree

Stands green with the glory of perpetual foliage.

When the sky had blazed with the fires of Phaethon,

That place was untouched by the flames.

And when the flood had submerged the world with its waters,

It rose above the waves of Deucalion.

Hither come no bloodless diseases, no sickly old age,

Nor cruel death, nor harsh fear;

Nor unspeakable wickedness, nor the mad desire for wealth,

Nor Mars, nor the fury burning with love of slaughter.

Bitter grief is absent, and poverty clad in rags,

And sleepless cares, and violent hunger.

No storm rages there, nor the dreadful force of wind;

Nor does frost cover the earth with icy dew.

No cloud stretches its fleeces over the fields;

Nor does turbid moisture of water fall from on high.

But in the midst is a spring, which they call by the name of living,

Clear, gentle, rich with sweet waters.

Bursting forth once through each season of the months,

It waters all the grove twelve times with its waves.

Here the race of trees, rising with lofty trunk,

Bears gentle fruits that shall not fall to the ground.

This grove, these woods, one bird inhabits—Phoenix:

One alone, yet it lives renewed by its own death.

A memorable attendant, it obeys and serves Phoebus:

This office mother Nature gave it to hold,

When the golden dawn first rises and reddens,

When first it puts the stars to flight with rosy light:

Three times and four times it plunges its body into the holy waters;

Three times and four times it drinks from the living stream.

It rises, and settles on the topmost summit of a tall tree

Which alone looks down upon the whole grove;

And turning toward the new risings of the newborn Phoebus,

It awaits his rays and the emerging brightness.

And when the sun has struck the threshold of the shining gate,

And the gentle breath of the first light has flashed forth;

It begins to pour forth the melodies of sacred song,

And to stir the new light with its wondrous voice:

Which neither the voices of Aedonia, nor the musical flute

Could match with the modes of Cyrrha.

Nor is the dying swan thought able to imitate it,

Nor the tuneful strings of the Cyllenean lyre.

After Phoebus has poured his horses into the open expanse of Olympus,

And has brought forth the whole orb as he moves along;

It claps three times with repeated beat of wings

With sounds unerring by night and day.

And likewise it marks the swift hours;

And having thrice adored the fire-bearing head, falls silent:

Keeper of the groves, and venerable priestess of the wood,

And alone privy to your mysteries, O Phoebus;

When it has now completed a thousand years of life,

And long ages have rendered it heavy with years;

That it may renew its life worn down by the pressure of fate,

It flees the sweet resting-place of its accustomed grove.

And when, with eagerness for rebirth, it has left the holy place;

Then it seeks this world, where death holds its reign.

The long-lived bird directs its swift flight toward Syria;

To which Venus herself gave the name of Phoenix;

And seeks secluded groves through pathless wastes,

Where in the glades a remote forest lies hidden.

Then it chooses a lofty palm with its airy summit,

Which takes its pleasing name of Phoenix from the bird;

And where no harmful creature can break through,

Neither the slippery serpent, nor any bird of prey.

Then Aeolus shuts the winds in their hanging caves,

Lest they disturb the purple air with their blasts;

Lest a cloud gathered by the south wind through the void of heaven

Should drive away the rays of the sun, and harm the bird.

Thereupon it builds for itself either a nest or a tomb;

For it dies that it may live: yet it creates itself.

It gathers thence the juices and perfumes which from the rich forest

The Assyrian gathers, which the wealthy Arab collects;

Which either the Pygmean peoples or India plucks,

Or which the Sabaean land produces in its soft bosom.

Then it heaps up cinnamon, and the fragrance of amomum breathing from afar,

And balsam mingled with its leaf.

Absent is neither the gentle spray of cassia, nor of fragrant acanthus,

Nor the tears of frankincense, nor the rich drop.

To these it adds the tender ears of ripening nard,

And joins the welcome pastures of myrrh in abundance.

Straightway it places its changeable body in the strewn nest,

And lays its limbs at rest upon such a couch.

Then from its mouth it pours juices around and over its limbs,

About to die amid its own obsequies.

Then amid the varied perfumes it commends its soul;

Nor does it fear the faithfulness of so great a deposit.

Meanwhile the body, consumed by its life-giving death,

Grows hot, and the very heat brings forth flame;

And from afar it catches fire from the ethereal light:

It blazes, and dissolved is resolved into ash.

These ashes, gathered as it were into a mass in death,

It fuses together, and they take on the likeness of a seed.

From this the creature is said first to arise without limbs:

But the color of the worm is said to be milky white.

It grows suddenly to an immense size within a fixed time,

And gathers itself into the shape of a smooth egg:

Then it is reformed into the figure it had before,

And the Phoenix burgeons forth with its coverings broken.

And as rustic caterpillars, when held by a thread to rocks,

Are wont to be transformed into a butterfly.

No food granted in our world is given to it;

Nor does any care to feed it while still unfledged.

It sips the ambrosial dews with heavenly nectar,

Which have fallen from the star-bearing sky.

These it gathers; on these the bird is nourished amid the perfumes,

Until it carries its form to full maturity.

But when it begins to flower in the bloom of its first youth,

It flies forth, now to return to its ancestral home.

But first, whatever remains of its own body,

Its bones, or ashes, and its cast-off coverings;

With balsamic ointment, and myrrh, and dissolved frankincense

It buries, and with dutiful mouth rounds into a ball.

Bearing this in its feet it makes for the rising of the sun,

And settling on the altar, lays it in the sacred temple.

It presents and shows itself as a wonder to the beholder;

Such beauty is there, such honor abounds.

First its color is such as the smooth rind conceals,

Which the ripe pomegranate gathers in its saffron grains.

Such as dwells in the leaves which the wild poppy bears,

When Flora opens her garments beneath the reddening sky.

With this covering the shoulders and comely breast shine;

With this the head, the neck, and the upper back gleam.

And the tail is spread out, marked with tawny gold,

In whose spots mingled purple glows red.

Above the feathers shines a bright device, such as Iris

Is wont to paint the cloud on high.

The beak gleams white, distinguished with mingled green emerald;

And a jeweled point opens at the tip of the pure horn.

Its great eyes you would think twin hyacinths;

From the midst of which a bright flame flickers.

A radiate crown equals the whole head,

Bearing aloft the high glory of Phoebus's head.

Scales tinged with tawny gold cover its legs:

But a rosy and honorable color adorns its claws.

Its form is seen mingled between the likeness of the Peacock,

And the painted bird of Phasis.

The bird that is born in the lands of Arabia

Can scarcely equal it in size, whether beast or bird.

Yet it is not slow, as birds that with their great body

Have sluggish gait and very heavy weight:

But light and swift, full of regal beauty.

Such does it show itself continually to the sight of men.

Egypt comes hither to the wonder of so great a sight;

And the rejoicing crowd salutes the rare bird.

Straightway they carve its form in consecrated marble;

And mark the thing and the day with a new inscription.

Every kind of winged creature gathers itself into a throng;

Nor does any remember prey, nor does any feel fear.

Attended by a choir of birds it flies through the heights;

And the joyful crowd follows with dutiful service.

But after it has reached the breezes of the pure ether;

Soon it returns; and that one is hidden in its own place.

O bird of fortunate lot and lineage,

To whom God himself has granted to be born from itself!

Whether female or male, or neither, or both,

Happy, who observes no covenant of Venus.

Death is its Venus; its only pleasure is in death:

That it may be born, it desires first to die.

It is itself its own offspring, its own father, and its own heir,

Itself the nurse of itself, always its own nursling.

It is itself, yet not the same that is itself, nor is it itself.

It has gained eternal life by the gift of death.