Daybreak over sea and wold
Impression: Le Réveillon
"Like a white lady from her bed."
Poem
Le Réveillon
The sky is laced with fitful red,The circling mists and shadows flee,The dawn is rising from the sea,Like a white lady from her bed.
And jagged brazen arrows fallAthwart the feathers of the night,And a long wave of yellow lightBreaks silently on tower and hall,
And spreading wide across the woldWakes into flight some fluttering bird,And all the chestnut tops are stirred,And all the branches streaked with gold.
In brief
SummaryA short picture of daybreak in three quatrains. The sky is laced with red, the mists flee, and the dawn rises from the sea 'Like a white lady from her bed'. Brassy arrows of light strike through the feathers of the night, and a wave of yellow light breaks silently over tower and hall. The light then spreads across the open country, waking a bird, stirring the chestnut tops and streaking the branches with gold.
Key themes
"The dawn is rising from the sea,"
Summary
The first stanza shows the dawn arriving. 'The sky is laced with fitful red', the mists and shadows circle and flee, and 'The dawn is rising from the sea, / Like a white lady from her bed.'
The second stanza turns the sunrise into an attack on the dark. 'Jagged brazen arrows fall / Athwart the feathers of the night', as if night were a great bird being shot down, and 'a long wave of yellow light / Breaks silently on tower and hall'.
In the third stanza the light moves outward and downward. 'Spreading wide across the wold', it 'Wakes into flight some fluttering bird', stirs 'all the chestnut tops', and leaves 'all the branches streaked with gold'. The poem ends with the whole landscape lit and in motion, all in a single long sentence that runs from the second stanza to the last.
Themes
Waking
The poem is about the world waking up. The dawn rises 'Like a white lady from her bed', the mists 'flee', and by the last stanza the light 'Wakes into flight some fluttering bird' and sets the chestnut tops stirring. The French subtitle, 'Le Réveillon', is related to the French word for waking, and each stanza brings a little more of the scene to life.
Light as a weapon and a wave
Wilde pictures sunrise through two contrasting images. First it is violent: 'jagged brazen arrows fall / Athwart the feathers of the night', shooting down the dark like a bird. Then it is soft and liquid: 'a long wave of yellow light / Breaks silently on tower and hall'. The colours move from 'fitful red' and white through brass and yellow to the final 'gold'.
Quotes
Context
'Impression: Le Réveillon' appears in the 'Fourth Movement' section of Wilde's collected poems. It has three four-line stanzas rhymed abba, and is one of several poems Wilde titled 'Impression'. In French, 'réveillon' is a long night-time feast, and the word is related to 'réveil', waking.
About this edition
- Text: the complete work from Standard Ebooks, released into the public domain (CC0 1.0). We change only the layout.
- Download the EPUB of the whole book it comes from, free, for any e-reader.
- Every quotation and glossary word in these notes is checked against the text.