The gem of the skies in a summer season

Phoenix rising by the sun in the Aberdeen Bestiary Source: University of Notre Dame It has been intensely hot again this week and I was listening on the news this morning to reports of fires in the Midlands. It made me think of these lines from ' The Phoenix ', a 10th century Old English poem in the Exeter Book which expands upon an older Latin text. When the gem of the skies in a summer season,…