There is something about daybreak on a clear morning, when the sun rises and lights up the landscape. This week’s poems are about sunrises, dawn and daybreak.
John Donne enjoins us to watch “The Sun Rising” and we move on to William Wordsworth’s poem in praise of the London dawn, “Composed on Westminster Bridge”, then Ella Wheeler Wilcox gives us a beautiful and haunting description of “Dawn”.
Poem 127. The Sun Rising
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
John Donne (1572—1631)
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.
She’s all states, and all princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus.
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.
Donne begins by personifying the sun: upbraiding it for breaking through the curtains to wake him and his lover. He orders the “saucy pedantic wretch” to go and bother “late school boys and sour prentices” (i.e. apprentices) who are more legitimate targets for its wakening rays but not to bother lovers who are always too occupied to keep track of “the rags of time”.
In the second stanza he moves on to disparage the sun’s power against that of his lover’s eyes: he could blot out the sun’s light at will but he would also lose sight of her: he claims that she could blind even the sun with her gaze and that, loving her, he is as rich as a prince of the Indies.
He expands on this theme in the third stanza, claiming that the world consists only of his lover and himself: “She’s all states, and all princes, I/Nothing else is”, a familiar sensation to lovers: nothing else matters and as long as the sun warms them, that’s enough. The confines of the world contract to the bed where they lie.
Links
- Read about the poem on Wikipedia.
Poem 128. Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
William Wordsworth (1770—1850)
The beauty of the morning
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Wordsworth’s sonnet praises the beauty of London at daybreak, suggesting that one must be dull indeed not to appreciate such a sight, when the morning drapes the city like a diaphanous garment with the silence and emptiness impressing the poet with a sense of majesty. No natural landscape can compete with the sight of the sleeping city without its pall of smoke.
The first line has been used in many other contexts: the one which comes most readily to my mind is Flanders and Swann’s tribute to the London bus, “A Transport of Delight”:
The big six-wheeler, scarlet-painted,
London Transport, diesel-engined,
Ninety-seven horsepower omnibusEarth has not anything to show more fair
Mind the stairs! Mind the stairs! Mind the stairs! Mind the stairs!
The Omnibus, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann.
Links
- Read about the poem on Wikipedia.
Poem 129. Dawn
Refreshed by his long sleep, the Light
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850—1919)
Kisses the languid lips of Night,
Ere she can rise and hasten on.
Day’s sweetest moments are at dawn;
Refreshed by his long sleep, the Light
Kisses the languid lips of Night,
Ere she can rise and hasten on.
All glowing from his dreamless rest
He holds her closely to his breast,
Warm lip to lip and limb to limb,
Until she dies for love of him.
I like this short poem because the language is so pretty. Light is personified as the lover of Night and the description of their amorous embrace and her ultimate dissolution reflects the way in which night gradually cedes its dominance to the day.