Dawn

by Arthur Rimbaud (1886)

I have embraced the summer dawn

Nothing was stirring as yet in front of the palaces.
The water was dead.
The shadows did not leave the road in the woods.
I walked, awakening the live and warm breaths;
and the precious stones watched, and wings silently rose up.

The first venture was, on the path already filled with cool, pale light, a flower which told me its name.

I laughed at the blond waterfall that ran disheveling its hair through the pines: at its silver crest I recognized the goddess.

Then I took off her veils one by one. In the path, shaking my arms. Across the plain, where I denounced her to the cock. In the big city, she fled among the bell-towers and the domes; and running like a beggar along the marble quays, I pursued her.

At the top of the road, near a laurel grove, I enfolded her in her gathered-up veils, and I felt her vast body a little. Dawn and the child fell at the edge of the wood.

Upon awakening, it was noon.

Why I like it:
I love that it is a quest to embrace the sun. And I enjoy the flow of the story… you can sense the poet is in competition with all things that will feel the sun… racing against the rooster, the rocks on the path, the flowers…If you’ve read more than a few entries on this blog you can tell that this poem fits my tastes. I love nature personified and the idea that humankind is just a small part. However big we dream (even to embrace the dawn) we are still just a part of it all… rocks, trees, cities, waterfalls and flowers. Also there are so many poems that romanticize and fall in love with the moon. I’m a moongazer and always will be, still I like that here the sun has a chance to shine (ha!).