Aubade Poems
An example of an aubade:
Aubade – William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
HARK! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise!
Arise, arise!
--
An aubade is to put it simply, a love poem or song that’s written in the morning directed to a sleeping woman. These usually are conflated with "alba’s", which are a genre of Old Occitan lyric poetry describes the longing of lovers who, having passed a night together, must separate for fear of being discovered. Typically written in the 18th and 19th Century, aubade's in the 20th Century have shifted their focus from the genre's original courtly love context into the more abstract theme of a human parting at daybreak. A classic example of a modern aubade is Phillip Larkin's "Aubade".
In this example, you can see there are 4 sets of rhymes in this poem including one half-rhyme and one rhyming couplet at the end which was common in a lot of Shakespeare's work.
Other than those smart rhymes, Shakespeare strengths in the poem are located in his use of figurative language. He used a couple of attractive personifications here, “the lark at heaven's gate sings”, and “winking Mary-buds begin to open their golden eyes.” In addition, he also used the other name of the Greek sun-god Apollo, Phoebus, as a symbol of the sun. Furthermore, he also appropriately used a hyperbolic metaphor to replace dews on flowers’ petals with “those springs on chaliced flowers”.
:):):)
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