The Poetry of Night and Day
Poems like “Aurora [2]” contribute to literary traditions that draw on the imagery and mythologies of day and night, light and dark, to write about good and evil, life and death. Two examples follow, one primarily Christian and spiritual in its outlook, the other primarily Classical and amatory. In the first, the Elizabethan poet George Gascoigne develops in considerable detail a metaphorical conceit comparing sleeping and waking to death and Christian resurrection. In imagining a time “When we have changed this mortal place / For Immortality,” Gascoigne may, like Pulter, refer to 1 Corinthians 15:51–53, where “we shall all be changed … and this mortal must put on immortality.” Gascoigne also wrote a companion piece, “Gascoigne’s Good Night.”
- You that have spent the silent night
- In sleep and quiet rest,
- And joy to see the cheerful light
- That riseth in the East:
- Now clear your voice, now cheer your heart,
- Come help me now to sing:
- Each willing wight come bear a part,
- To praise the heavenly King.
- And you whom care in prison keeps,
- Or sickness doth suppress,
- Or secret sorrow breaks your sleeps,
- Or dolours do distress:
- Yet bear a part in doleful wise,
- Yea think it good accord,
- And acceptable sacrifice,
- Each sprite to praise the lord.
- The dreadful night with darksomeness
- Had overspread the light,
- And sluggish sleep with drowsiness
- Had overpressed our might:
- A glass wherein we may behold
- Each storm that stops our breath,
- Our bed the grave, our clothes like mould,
- And sleep like dreadful death.
- Yet as this deadly night did last
- But for a little space,
- And heavenly day now night is past
- Doth show his pleasant face:
- So must we hope to see God’s face
- At last in heaven on high,
- When we have changed this mortal place
- For Immortality.
- And of such haps and heavenly joys
- As then we hope to hold,
- All earthly sights and worldly toys
- Are tokens to behold.
- The day is like the day of doom,
- The sun, the Son of man,
- The skies the heavens, the earth the tomb
- Wherein we rest till then.
- The Rainbow bending in the sky,
- Bedecked with sundry hues,
- Is like the seat of God on high,
- And seems to tell these news:
- That as thereby he promisèd
- To drown the world no more,
- So by the blood which Christ hath shed,
- He will our health restore.
- The misty clouds that fall sometime,
- And overcast the skies,
- Are like to troubles of our time,
- Which do but dim our eyes:
- But as such dews are dried up quite,
- When Phoebus shows his face,
- So are such fancies put to flight,
- Where God doth guide by grace.
- The carrion Crow, that loathsome beast,
- Which cries against the rain,
- Both for her hue and for the rest,
- The Devil resembleth plain:
- And as with guns we kill the Crow,
- For spoiling our relief,
- The Devil so must we overthrow,
- With gunshot of belief.
- The little birds which sing so sweet
- Are like the angels’ voice,
- Which render God his praises meet,
- And teach us to rejoice:
- And as they more esteem that mirth
- Than dread the night’s annoy,
- So must we deem our days on earth
- But hell to heavenly joy.
- Unto which joys for to attain,
- God grant us all his grace,
- And send us after worldly pain,
- In heaven to have a place,
- Where we may still enjoy that light,
- Which never shall decay:
- Lord for thy mercy lend us might
- To see that joyful day.
Pulter’s contemporary Richard Lovelace (1618–1658) provides a second example. His poem, published posthumously in 1659, resembles Pulter’s in its use of Classical imagery of night and day, but differs in putting that imagery in the service of love poetry.
- Night! loathed jailor of the locked up sun,
- And tyrant-turnkey on committed day;
- Bright eyes lie fettered in thy dungeon,
- And heaven itself doth thy dark wards obey.
- Thou dost arise our living hell;
- With thee groans, terrors, furies dwell,
- Until Lucasta doth awake,
- And with her beams these heavy chains off shake.
- Behold, with opening her almighty lid
- Bright eyes break rowling, and with lustre spread,
- And captive day his chariot mounted is;
- Night to her proper hell is beat,
- And screwed to her ebon seat;
- Till th’ Earth with play oppressed lies,
- And draws again the curtains of her eyes.
- But bondslave, I, know neither day nor night;
- Whether she murd’ring sleep, or saving wake;
- Now broiled i’th’ zone of her reflected light,
- Then froze, my icicles, not sinews shake.
- Smile then, new Nature, your soft blast
- Doth melt our ice, and fires waste;
- Whil’st the scorch’d shiv’ring world new born
- Now feels it all the day one rising morn.