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Home  »  The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse  »  George Darley (1795–1846)

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

The Phoenix

George Darley (1795–1846)

From ‘Nepenthe’, Canto I

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-sunn’d Phoenix! when she must

Crumble at length to hoary dust!

Her gorgeous death-bed! 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

Mourn’d 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 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!

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 brinded neck high-arch’d in air

Like a small rainbow faded there;

But brighter glow’d her plumy crown

Mouldering 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!

O, fast her amber blood doth flow

From the heart-wounded Incense Tree,

Fast as earth’s deep-embosom’d woe

In silent rivulets to the sea!

Beauty may weep her fair first-born,

Perchance in as resplendent tears,

Such golden dewdrops bow the corn

When the stern sickleman appears:

But O! such perfume to a bower

Never allured sweet-seeking bee,

As to sip fast that nectarous shower

A thirstier minstrel drew in me!