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

 

Barnabystichs

 

Home itself

was but another bead

in the long rosary

of his regrets.

-- Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, (1841)

 

The sun went down,

and night came on,

and he was still

quite tranquil.

-- ibid

 

He looked back, once, before he left the street:

a sight    not     easily  to be   erased,

even from his remembrance,

so long as he had life.

-- ibid

 

every light shadow

thrown by the passing clouds

upon the daisied ground.

-- ibid

 

the cat sat moping

on the ashy forge

-- ibid

 

as day   deepened into evening,

and darkness   crept into the nooks.

-- ibid

 

Last-Light Tableaux

like

black    lakes

  troubled by

fantastic moons

-- Oscar Wilde, Salomé (1891)

The sun had sunk now  to the line of woodland;

all the opposing slope was already in twilight,

but the lakes below us   were aflame.

-- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1945)