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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PAEAN OF DAWN IN MAY, by HERBERT TRENCH Poet's Biography
First Line: In the darkness before dawn
Last Line: And the world's roofed with song!
Subject(s): Dawn; Sunrise
First Line: In the darkness before dawn
Last Line: And the world's roofed with song!
Subject(s): Dawn; Sunrise
IN the darkness before dawn
When dews make gray the field
And the world is trance-withdrawn
And trees but half revealed,
O then, high up, above the topmost lawn,
What fountains are unsealed!
Scarce can the eye see light
When the ear becomes aware
That instruments exquisite
Are raining from the air,
While sun and pale moon mingle their delight,
Adorations everywhere!
Who are these solemnizing
In song-mists crystalline
Between the sun's uprising
And the sheened moon's decline
Glories so far above our poor devising
Unseen before the shrine?
Whose are these rainbow-hued
Symphonies high and higher
Wafted in multitude
Of choir outclimbing choir,
As though the heavens were some deep-tangled wood
And each leaf voice and fire?
Hark! it grows less and less,
That rapture nothing mars;
They rise beyond our guess
Beyond our senses' bars,
They drink the virgin Light, the measureless,
And in it fade like stars.
Earth sends them up from hills --
Her winged wishes, they!
Wild hopes, that nothing kills,
To outsoar the young Day,
To shake off all that chains the soul and chills
In one immortal ray!
They ascend ere the first beam
On dark heaven waxes strong
To dwell in that blue stream
Of Dawn, and float along --
The zenith and the future all their dream --
And the world's roofed with song!
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
Other Poems of Interest...
THIS MORNING, GOD by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR
BURNING DAWN by HAYDEN CARRUTH
DAWN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON
IN THE GARDEN AT THE DAWN HOUR by EDGAR LEE MASTERS
EARLY RISER by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE