The Phoenix and the Turtle Literary Elements

The poem begins with an unnamed speaker calling a number of birds to a ceremony for the Phoenix and the Turtle. In stanza 6, the reader is told “the anthem doth commence.” At this point, the speaker is either the “bird of loudest lay” or else the entire chorus of birds: the eagle, swan, and crow. Starting in stanza 11, Reason begins to speak. The last 7 stanzas are spoken by Reason.

The perspective of the unidentified speaker, birds, and Reason are all third-person omniscient.

The poem is a 67-line poem made up of 13 quatrains (stanzas of four lines) and five tercets. It does not follow a common poetic form like a sonnet. In the quatrains the rhyme scheme is ABBC. In the tercets it is AAA. The poem uses seven-syllable lines with four accents. There is stress on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th syllables. This meter is called heptasyllabic trochaic or trochaic tetrameter.

The “fever’s end” is a metaphor for death.

The Phoenix and the Turtle are metaphorically compared to “stars of love” because they shine as an example of mystical union.

Let the bird of loudest lay (alliteration of “l”)
Be the death-divining swan (alliteration of “d”)
That it cried how true a twain (alliteration of “t”)
Truth and beauty buried be (alliteration of “b”)

But thou shrieking harbinger (assonance of “i” and “e” sounds)
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go (assonance of “o” and “u” sounds)

Elizabethan poetry, metaphysical poetry, allegorical poetry

The poem begins with a gathering of birds at the urn where the ashes of the Phoenix and the Turtle lie. The place is left unnamed.

Formal, commemorative, mournful, elegiac

The Phoenix and the Turtle are the protagonists as they represent ideal love. Both death and the world are the antagonist because they cause the demise of these lovers.

The Phoenix and the Turtle have a mystical union that is too pure for the world. Neither personality nor reason can understand this love, as it breaks the normal rules of personhood and logic. After the death of the lovers, truth and beauty leave the world.

The poem reaches its climax with Reason’s cry in stanza 11. There it declares that love is the true reason.

The mention of the “sole Arabian tree” (the palm tree) in the second line foreshadows that the poem will have something to do with the phoenix because it is closely associated with the palm.

The line “Reason, in itself confounded,/Saw division grow together” draws on the language of the Holy Trinity in Christian belief. According to the Athanasian Creed used in the Church of England, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit represent “one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity: Neither confounding the persons: nor dividing the substance.” In describing the love of the Phoenix and the Turtle, Shakespeare seems to have drawn on this text and others describing the paradox of the Trinity, which is both separate and united. Similarly, the three-line stanzas in the poem’s Threnos may be an allusion to the trinity.

"Chaste wings" is an example of synecdoche: the wings of the birds stand in for their entire selves.

The phoenix, turtle, screech-owl, eagle, swan, crow, and "bird of loudest lay" are all personified in the poem. They can speak, marry, sing, and perform either state or religious rituals. In addition, abstract concepts like property, reason, love, and number are also personified. They become characters in the poems who can feel emotions and speak.

"Truth may seem but cannot be;
Beauty brag but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be."

The poem ends by declaring that with the Phoenix and the Turtle dead so are truth and beauty. Things may appear to be true or beautiful, but they never will be.