Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE DAWN, by ALFRED TENNYSON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Red of the dawn! Last Line: The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away? Alternate Author Name(s): Tennyson, Lord Alfred; Tennyson, 1st Baron; Tennyson Of Aldworth And Farringford, Baron Subject(s): Dawn; Sunrise | ||||||||
I RED of the Dawn! Screams of a babe in the red-hot palms of a Moloch of Tyre, Man with his brotherless dinner on man in the tropical wood, Priests in the name of the Lord passing souls thro' fire to the fire, Head-hunters and boats of Dahomey that float upon human blood! II Red of the Dawn! Godless fury of peoples, and Christless frolic of kings, And the bolt of war dashing down upon cities and blazing farms, For Babylon was a child new-born, and Rome was a babe in arms, And London and Paris and all the rest are as yet but in leading-strings. III Dawn not Day, While scandal is mouthing a bloodless name at her cannibal feast, And rake-ruin'd bodies and souls go down in a common wreck, And the press of a thousand cities is prized for it smells of the beast, Or easily violates virgin Truth for a coin or a check. IV Dawn not Day! Is it Shame, so few should have climb'd from the dens in the level below, Men, with a heart and a soul, no slaves of a four-footed will? But if twenty million of summers are stored in the sunlight still, We are far from the noon of man, there is time for the race to grow. V Red of the Dawn! Is it turning a fainter red? so be it, but when shall we lay The Ghost of the Brute that is walking and haunting us yet, and be free? In a hundred, a thousand winters? Ah, what will our children be, The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THIS MORNING, GOD by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR BURNING DAWN by HAYDEN CARRUTH DAWN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON IN THE GARDEN AT THE DAWN HOUR by EDGAR LEE MASTERS EARLY RISER by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE WORDS WHEN WE NEED THEM by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE A CHARACTER by ALFRED TENNYSON |
|