For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger; At whose approach ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to churchyards.
At last, the golden orientall gate Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre, And Phœbus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate, Came dauncing forth, shaking his dewie hayre; And hurls his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.
Edmund Spenser,The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book I, Canto V, Stanza 2.
You cannot rob me of free nature's grace, You cannot shut the windows of the sky Through which Aurora shows her brightening face.
James Thomson,Castle of Indolence (1748), Canto II, Stanza 3.
The lively lark stretched forth her wing, The messenger of morning bright, And with her cheerful voice did sing The day’s approach, discharging night, When that Aurora, blushing red, Descried the guilt of Thetis’ bed.
As faireAurora in her morning gray, Deckt with the ruddie glister of her love Is faireSamela;
Robert Greene,Menaphon (1589)
Her cheekes are like the blushing clowde That beautefies Auroraes face,
Thomas Lodge, "Rosalyndes description"
Rosalynde (2nd ed., 1592)
O happy Tithon! if thou know’st thy hap, And valuest thy wealth, as I my want, Then need’st thou not—which ah! I grieve to grant— Repine at Jove, lull’d in his leman’s lap: That golden shower in which he did repose— One dewy drop it stains Which thy Aurora rains Upon the rural plains, When from thy bed she passionately goes.Then, waken’d with the music of the merles, She not remembers Memnon when she mourns: That faithful flame which in her bosom burns From crystal conduits throws those liquid pearls: Sad from thy sight so soon to be removed, She so her grief delates. —O favour’d by the fates Above the happiest states, Who art of one so worthy well-beloved!
Whose head, befringed with bescattered tresses, Shows likeApollo’s when the morn he dresses, Or like Aurora when with pearl she sets Her long, dishevell’d, rose-crown’d trammelets:
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure, And bosom beating with a heart renew’d. Thy cheek begins to redden thro’ the gloom, Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine, Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise, And shake the darkness from their loosen’d manes, And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.
