Aubades et Sérénades

 

Aubades:

 

Dawn made itself felt

in a gathering whiteness

eastward  over the river.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

 

tatters of night lingered,

diluted to blue

-- Cornell Woolrich, I Married a Dead Man (1948)

 

The sun  bubbled up  from the horizon,

and shone through the haze of floury dust

sighing down from the Sahara.

-- Neil Stephenson, The Confusion (2004)

 

Lights began to snap on

in bedrooms, then in kitchens.

In the growing lavender of daybreak, the carny took shape.

-- William Gresham, Nightmare Alley (1946)

 

 

Sérénades:

 

The long procession of lamps

on the beautiful street

was flaring  in the clear  red  of the sunset

towards which it marched . .  .  .    .

-- Wm Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1884-5)

 

a rich golden light  clung to the leaves  like batter

-- T.  Coraghessan Boyle,  World’s End (1987), p. 129

 

Eos / Aurora

 

the shining   spring morning

-- Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions (1948)

 

this peachy morning-light

makes your face  more radiant

    than any flower,

and more succulent

   than any fruit …

-- Neil Stephenson, The System of the World (2004)

 

We try,   when we wake,

to lay the new day

at God’s feet   .  .  .

-- C.S.Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940)

The Creation of Eden

le  premier  soleil   sur le  premier  matin

-- Charles Péguy, Eve

Subsequent manifestations:

By this time, the eastern sky  was gorgeous with light

-- Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border (1917)

Even before the sun gave light, dead day was creeping  from bush to bush,  watching man.

-- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

the washed-out, bird-bedeviled dawn

-- T.  Coraghessan Boyle,  World’s End (1987), p. 17

Sunrise in the South Pacific

“There it is, sir!” he cried,

and pointed in the very eyeball of the dawn.  

For a while, I could see nothing

but the bluish ruins of the morning bank …

Then the sun rose, pierced a gap

in these débris of vapours,

and displayed an inconsiderable islet,

flat as a plate  upon the sea,

and spiked with palms of disproportioned altitude.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas (1896)

Glimpses of Eternity

[Time: 1937

 Place:  Spain, at the front, where Orwell was fighting the forces of Franco]

                    (1)  

When an aeroplane swoops down
and uses its machine-gun,

the sound,   from below,

is like a fluttering of wings.

                (2)  

As the yellow dawn  comes up behind us,

the Andalusian sentry,  muffled in his cloak,

begins singing.

Across no man’s land,

a hundred or two hundred yards away,,

you can hear the Fascist sentry   also singing.

-- George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938; publ. 1943)

Threshing-Day at Dawn

[A farm in Wisconsin, late 1800s.]

the east

began to bloom,

and long streamers  of red   began to  un  roll ll ll l

along the vast gray dome  of sky

[from: Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border (1917), chapter V]