The Phoenix By George Darley.

From ‘Nepenthe’, Canto I.

Part

2 of 4.

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 call’d for a dumb cry
With moonbroad orbs of wonder I
Beheld the immortal Bird on high
Glassing the great sun in her eye.
Stedfast 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!