Hello everyone –
This will be the
first of three weekly Hollydaze Quotemails for the month of December. To start
things off in a blaze of glory, I’d like to share with you a faery tale by Hans
Christian Andersen and two poems about one of my favorite fantastic beasts: the
phoenix bird!
“The Phoenix
Bird” (1850)
By Hans
Christian Andersen (1805-1875)
(Slightly
Modernized by the Editor)
Archived @ https://hca.gilead.org.il/phoenix.html
In the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, bloomed a rose bush.
Here, in the first rose, a bird was born. His flight was like the flashing of
light, his plumage was beauteous, and his song ravishing. But when Eve plucked
the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, when she and Adam were
driven from Paradise, there fell from the flaming sword of the cherub a spark
into the nest of the bird, which blazed up forthwith. The bird perished in the
flames; but from the red egg in the nest there fluttered aloft a new one — the
one solitary Phoenix bird. The fable tells that he dwells in Arabia, and that
every hundred years, he burns himself to death in his nest; but each time a new
Phoenix, the only one in the world, rises up from the red egg.
The bird flutters round us, swift as light, beauteous in color, charming in
song. When a mother sits by her infant’s cradle, he stands on the pillow, and,
with his wings, forms a glory around the infant’s head. He flies through the
chamber of content, and brings sunshine into it, and the violets on the humble
table smell doubly sweet.
But the Phoenix is not the bird of Arabia alone. He wings his way in the
glimmer of the Northern Lights over the plains of Lapland, and hops among the
yellow flowers in the short Greenland summer. Beneath the copper mountains of
Fablun, and England’s coal mines, he flies, in the shape of a dusty moth, over
the hymnbook that rests on the knees of the pious miner. On a lotus leaf he
floats down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eye of the Hindu maid
gleams bright when she beholds him.
The Phoenix bird, do you not know him? The Bird of Paradise, the holy swan of
song! On the car of Thespis he sat in the guise of a chattering raven, and
flapped his black wings, smeared with the lees of wine; over the sounding harp
of Iceland swept the swan’s red beak; on Shakespeare’s shoulder he sat in the
guise of Odin’s raven, and whispered in the poet’s ear “Immortality!” and at
the minstrels’ feast he fluttered through the halls of the Wartburg.
The Phoenix bird, do you not know him? He sang to you the Marseillaise, and you
kissed the pen that fell from his wing; he came in the radiance of Paradise,
and perchance you did turn away from him towards the sparrow who sat with
tinsel on his wings.
The Bird of Paradise — renewed each century — born in flame, ending in flame!
Your picture, in a golden frame, hangs in the halls of the rich, but you
yourself often fly around, lonely and disregarded, a myth — “The Phoenix of
Arabia.”
In Paradise, when you were born in the first rose, beneath the Tree of
Knowledge, you received a kiss, and your right name was given you — your name,
Poetry.
“Sonnet XVI: An
Allusion to the Phoenix”
By Michael
Drayton (1563-1631)
‘Mongst all the
creatures in this spacious round
Of the birds’
kind, the Phoenix is alone,
Which best by you
of living things is known;
None like to that,
none like to you is found.
Your beauty is the
hot and splendorous Sun,
The precious
spices be your chaste desire,
Which being
kindled by that heavenly fire,
Your life so like
the Phoenix's begun;
Yourself thus
burned in that sacred flame,
With so rare
sweetness all the heavens perfuming,
Again increasing
as you are consuming,
Only by dying born
the very same;
And, winged by
fame, you to the stars ascend,
So you of time
shall live beyond the end.
“The Phoenix”
by George Darley (1795-1846)
O Blest unfabled
Incense Tree,
That burns in
glorious Araby,
With red scent
chalicing the air,
Till earth-life
grow Elysian there!
Half buried to her
flaming breast
In this bright
tree, she makes her nest,
Hundred sunned
Phoenix! When she must
Crumble at length
to hoary dust!
Her gorgeous
deathbed! Her rich pyre
Burnt up with
aromatic fire!
Her urn, sight
high from spoiler men!
Her birthplace
when self-born again!
The mountainless
green wilds among,
Here ends she her
unechoing song!
With amber tears
and odorous sighs
Mourned by the
desert where she dies!
Laid like the
young fawn mossily
In sun-green vales
of Araby,
I woke hard by the
Phoenix tree
That with
shadeless boughs flamed over me,
And upward called
for a dumb cry
With Moon-bread
orbs of wonder I
Beheld the
immortal Bird on high
Glassing the great
Sun in her eye.
Steadfast she
gazed upon his fire,
Still her
destroyer and her sire!
As if to his her
soul of flame
Had flown already
whence it came;
Like those that
sit and glare so still,
Intense with their
death struggle, till
We touch, and
curdle at their chill!
But breathing yet
while she doth burn
The deathless
Daughter of the Sun!
Slowly to crimson
embers turn
The beauties of
the brightsome one.
O'er the broad
nest her silver wings
Shook down their
wasteful glitterings;
Her brindled neck
high arched in air
Like a small
rainbow faded there;
But brighter
glowed her plumy crown
Moldering to
golden ashes down;
With fume of sweet
woods, to the skies,
Pure as a Saint's
adoring sighs,
Warm as a prayer
in Paradise,
Her life-breath
rose in sacrifice!
The while with
shrill triumphant tone
Sounding aloud,
aloft, alone,
Ceaseless her
joyful deathwail she
Sang to departing
Araby!
Editor’s Note:
I’d like to take
this opportunity to invite my readers to visit my recently expanded blog at https://rhcfortnightlyquotemail.blogspot.com,
which includes a new feature entitled “Winged Words Windsday” – an ongoing
series of edutaining episodes, presented in both poetry and prose. I’ve also
launched a new personal Twitter account at https://twitter.com/RHCLambengolmo.
Today’s edition of Quotemail is actually a lead-in to next week’s edition of
Winged Words Windsday, which will cast the spotlight onto the phoenix bird and
its astronomical relationship to the Winter Solstice.
Until next time –
Rob 😊
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