The Romance of the Rose

Nature listens to the army vowing loyalty to love and continues her work in her forge, where she is making new creatures so that no species goes extinct. Death, personified as a woman, chases all people in a grand hunt; they cannot escape her. The narrator cites the phoenix as the singular example of how animals cannot go extinct, as there is only ever one phoenix and a new one emerges from the ashes of the old one every 500 years.

The narrator then speaks briefly on the value of alchemy, insisting that it will reveal marvels, and cites several examples of nature’s “transmutation” (hail, making glass, removing impurities from metal). Although Nature has been described, the narrator insists that it is not by his own power since nobody, even the old philosophers, could adequately depict Nature in any form of art. Still, the narrator tries to describe Nature’s beauty, saying that it is the source of all beauty and that she cannot be compared to anything since all beautiful things flow from her.

The oath from the army alleviates Nature’s grief; she goes to her priest, Genius, and has him list the shapes of all mortal things for her.