Dawn

Dawn blushed; betrayed her waking sky
To gently break another morrow fine.
Night waned – the black receding – highland
Reaching for the early morning wine.

The chorus rendered frantic caws and
Chirps and other avian song,
Mapping out the 'mine and yours, ' and
Goading more to sing along!

Quiescent water – deep of lake –
Reflected out the hazy red, but
Through the glass, a flick, a break:
An urgent tail from hidden bed!

And in the meadow, waking faces
Calmly spread a coloured veil;
The dew disclosing spider laces–
Oft with once a fly’s travail!

Dawn blushed; revealed her inner peace.
She handed on another blissful day.
Night ebbed, relenting to release of
Warming blood that gives to her display.

- Mark R Slaughter


This poem provides a very descriptive rendering of natural majesty of dawn and sunrise. It vividly describes to the reader the image of dawn, and tells of various animals beginning to wake; the world becoming alive again as the sun rises. It follows a fairly standard form of poetry, using four-line stanzas (or quatrains), which rhyme in the form of abcb or abab. It's chock full of poetic devices. Some examples of such are personification in line 1 (dawn blushed), and repetition of this in line 17, followed by even more personification with lines 18 (she handed on) and line 20 (warming blood, if you consider warm blood do be a human characteristic). Almost the entire poem consists of imagery, the second stanza having a particular emphasis on sound as opposed to the others, which focus on sight. There is also a metaphor in line 14 (a coloured veil).