Aubade
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An aubade is a poem or song of or about lovers separating at dawn.

Aubade has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak".

The form has some dramatic elements, since the poem is often a dialogue between the lovers, one saying that dawn is near and they must part, and the other answering no. There is often a refrain, in which the watchman, or occasionally the jealous husband, warns the lovers of the approaching dawn. Aubades were in the repertory of troubadours in Europe in the Middle Ages. An early English example is in Book III of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. The love poetry of the 16th century dealt mostly with unsatisfied love, so the aubade was not a major genre in Elizabethan lyric.

The aubade gained in popularity again with the advent of the metaphysical fashion; John Donne's poem "The Sunne Rising" is one of the finest examples of the aubade in English. Aubades were written from time to time in the 18th and 19th century, although none of them were quite up to metaphysical standards.

There have been several notable aubades in the 20th century, such as a major poem titled "Aubade" by Philip Larkin in which the lover can be seen as either life or death. French composers of the turn of the century wrote a number of aubades. In 1883, the French composer Emmanuel Chabrier composed an "Aubade" for piano solo, inspired by a four-month visit to Spain. Maurice Ravel included a Spain-inspired aubade entitled Alborada del gracioso in his 1906 piano suite Miroirs. The composer Francis Poulenc later wrote (in concerto form) a piece titled Aubade; it premiered in 1929.

One example of a modern aubade is William Empson's poem "Aubade". Other contemporary aubades include Eagle-Eye Cherry's 1997 single "Save Tonight" and Jack Johnson's "Banana Pancakes".
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Aubade



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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin