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Let the bird of loudest lay,
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On the sole Arabian tree,
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Herald sad and trumpet be,
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To whose sound chaste wings obey.
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But thou shrieking harbinger,
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Foul precurrer of the fiend,
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Augur of the fever's end,
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To this troop come thou not near!
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From this session interdict
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Every fowl of tyrant wing,
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Save the eagle, feather'd king:
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Keep the obsequy so strict.
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Let the priest in surplice white,
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That defunctive music can,
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Be the death-divining swan,
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Lest the requiem lack his right.
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And thou treble-dated crow,
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That thy sable gender makest
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With the breath thou givest and takest,
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'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
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Here the anthem doth commence:
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Love and constancy is dead;
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Phoenix and the turtle fled
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In a mutual flame from hence.
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So they loved, as love in twain
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Had the essence but in one;
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Two distincts, division none:
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Number there in love was slain.
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Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
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Distance, and no space was seen
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'Twixt the turtle and his queen:
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But in them it were a wonder.
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So between them love did shine,
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That the turtle saw his right
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Flaming in the phoenix' sight;
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Either was the other's mine.
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Property was thus appalled,
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That the self was not the same;
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Single nature's double name
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Neither two nor one was called.
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Reason, in itself confounded,
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Saw division grow together,
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To themselves yet either neither,
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Simple were so well compounded,
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That it cried, How true a twain
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Seemeth this concordant one!
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Love hath reason, reason none,
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If what parts can so remain.
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Whereupon it made this threne
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To the phoenix and the dove,
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Co-supremes and stars of love,
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As chorus to their tragic scene.
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Beauty, truth, and rarity,
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Grace in all simplicity,
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Here enclosed in cinders lie.
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Death is now the phoenix' nest
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And the turtle's loyal breast
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To eternity doth rest,
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'Twas not their infirmity,
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It was married chastity.
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Truth may seem, but cannot be:
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Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
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Truth and beauty buried be.
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To this urn let those repair
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That are either true or fair
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For these dead birds sigh a prayer.
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