Augur of the fever's end
-- Speaker (Line 7)

Importance: This line refers to the screech-owl as a harbinger of death. By his coming, this bird would predict death, and therefore he is not welcome at the funeral. However, this line also questions its own assumptions –because the way death is referred to is as "fever's end" – not a loss, but a perhaps peaceful end to the suffering of illness.

Keep the obsequy so strict
-- Speaker (Line 12)

Importance: This line constitutes a command to the birds (and probably especially to the eagle) to keep the funeral rites for the turtledove and the phoenix free from any interference or anything which might be a distraction from the mourning. It gives the reader some sense of where we are (a funeral) and what we are meant to be doing (mourning).

Thou treble-dated crow
-- Speaker (Line 17)

Importance: Crows were somewhat ambivalent figures: not noble like the eagle or holy like the dove. They are...