To Aurora
[1]1

Edited by Lara Dodds

“To Aurora [1]” is one of several poems by Pulter about or addressed to Aurora, the goddess of the dawn. The figure of Aurora is important in Pulter’s mythography, appearing as well in Aletheia’s Pearl32. In “To Aurora [1]” the speaker situates herself between night and day. She implores Aurora to arrive and drive away the Night, which, rather than offering rest, is a time when the speaker is forced to contemplate her sinful state. This poem can be usefully read in the context of the aubade. In the best known English examples of this tradition, such as Donne’s “The Sun Rising” or Juliet’s speech in Act 2 of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, heterosexual lovers desire to arrest the dawn. Pulter’s poem, by contrast, invites Aurora (and her daughter Astraea, the goddess of justice) to join her. These two female figures are the speaker’s “eternal friends,” and she demands that they rescue her from darkness, uncertainty, and doubt.

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Fair rosy virgin2
, when wilt thou arise3
And show the radiant luster of thine eyes?
Could’st thou but only view and not expel
This ugly hag, thou would’st trample her to Hell.
Old Night (I mean) with her infernal brood4
,
Who make men’s miseries their accursed food.
Did guilty only suffer, I would cease
These sad complaints5
 and ever hold my peace,
Though innocence I hold still in my breast;
Yet she (ay me) disturbs my quiet rest6
.
But I forget myself. What do I mean?
For who (alas) can say their heart is clean?
Come, then, sweet maid with thine immortal issue7
,
Who for a veil no bodkin8
 needs, nor tissue
Her alabaster9
 fabric to invest,
For in her naked beauty she shows best;
Come, then, and conquer these infernal fiends,
Sweet Light and Truth10
, my two eternal friends.