Sonnetsday 10

FROM I d e a. by Michael Drayton XVI. An Allusion to the Phoenix '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 splend'rous 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 burnèd 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.

Michael Drayton was wildly popular around the same time as Samuel Daniel, and Drayton's poetry was prized by Queen Elizabeth. I was drawn to this particular sonnet for the allusion to the phoenix.

Here is a sonnet I wrote last year alluding to the Phoenix, not remembering having ever encountered Drayton's poem back then.

The Flight of the Phoenix by Anniina Jokinen Like as the ancient red and golden bird Of Egypt's Kings and Lords of Araby, Whose songs Apollo on Olympus heard And Emperors of Rome gave revery; So my heart burns with ever-rising flame, The fiery tendrils licking at their prize; Th' inferno soon incinerates the same, And then, scorched through, my heart in ashes lies. And like the Phoenix' death comes at its birth, So my poor heart is generated 'new; Its fledgling voice doth rise to sing your worth, And it takes wing to fly back home to you.      And, like unto these never-dying wings,      So my heart ever loves and ever sings. (June, 2005)

Tags: Sonnets | Anniina's Poetry