Phoen-IX

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Fenix Arabie avis dicta quod colorem feniceum\ habeat, vel quod sit in toto orbe singularis et\ unica. Hec quingentos ultra annos vivens, dum\ se viderit senuisse, collectis aromatum virgultis, ro\ gum sibi instruit, et conversa ad radium solis alarum\ plausu voluntarium sibi incendium nutrit, seque urit.\

[in Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 56r, séx XII]

Tu Fénix, tu do amor doce traslado,
Companheiro em meus males peregrino,
Pois se em fogo te acaba o teu destino,
Em chamas me atormenta o meu cuidado
Tu te podes queixar de um triste fado,
Eu me queixarei de um deos mínimo,
Pois tu por desgraçado, e eu por fino
Acabas encendido, eu abrasado.
Mas oh, que as tuas ânsias são pequenas
À vista do martírio, em que discorro,
Porque renasces em morrendo apenas;
E servindo-te as penas de socorro.
Tu renasces do fogo em tendo penas,
Eu porque muito peno, em chamas morro.

(Francisco de Vasconcelos Coutinho, Comparando o seu amor ao Fénix,
em Fénix Renascida III, p. 229)

THE SISTERS

THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.
Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and
studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had
found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was
dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the
darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head
of a corpse. He had often said to me: "I am not long for this
world," and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were
true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to
myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my
ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in
the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some
maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed
to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.