Phoenix

Phoenix bird! Don't you know him?

The bird of paradise, the holy swan of song? 

He sat on the car of Thespis, like a chattering raven, flapping his black gutter-stained wings

the swan's red, sounding beak swept over the singing harp of Iceland

he sat on Shakespeare's shoulder 

disguised as Odin's raven, and whispered, "Immortality!" into his ear

and at the minstrels' feast he fluttered through the halls of the Wartburg.

Phoenix bird! Don't you know him? 

He sang the Marseillaise to you, and you kissed the feather that fell from his wing

he came in the glory of paradise, and perhaps you turned away from him toward the sparrow that sat with gold tinsel on its wings.

The bird of paradise-renewed each century-born in flame, dying in flame!

Your portrait in a frame of gold hangs in the halls of the rich, 

but you yourself often fly around lonely and misunderstood-a myth only. 

"The phoenix bird of Arabia."

When you were born in the garden of paradise

in its first rose, beneath the tree of knowledge

our Lord kissed you and gave you your true name-poetry!

~Hans Christian Andersen