The phoenix according to the poet Nonnus of Panopolis

Bringing balmy branches in his hooked talons onto your scented altar, a wise and age-old bird, the phoenix, bearing the end of a life and the naturally fecund beginning of another, is reborn, renewed image of an unchanging time, having in the fire broken free from old age, he receives from the fire his youth.

Nonnus of Panopolis, Dion. XL, 394 – 398. Translation of the French by the course translator