Break of Day [poem by John Shaw Neilson]

[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Heart of Spring (1919), Ballad and Lyrical Poems (1923), and Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]

Break of Day

The stars are pale.
Old is the Night, his case is grievous,
His strength doth fail.

Through stilly hours
The dews have draped with Love’s old lavishness
The drowsy flowers.

And Night shall die,
Already, lo! the Morn’s first ecstasies
Across the sky.

An evil time is done.
Again as some one lost in a quaint parable,
Comes up the Sun.

Source:
Shaw Neilson, Heart of Spring, Sydney: The Bookfellow, 1919, page 29

Also published in:
John Shaw Neilson, Ballad and Lyrical Poems, Sydney: The Bookfellow in Australia, 1923, page 20
John Shaw Neilson (edited by R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Book Publishing Company, 1934, page 29

Editor’s notes:
doth = (archaic) does