Break of Day

for Chorus

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Program Note

John Donne is an English poet that lived from 1572 to 1631. He is famous for many of the love poems he wrote in his youth, and for many of the religious poems he wrote later in his life. “Break of Day” is an aubade - a love poem about lovers departing at day break. In “Break of Day” a female narrator asks her lover why he must rise from the bed that they had shared. At first the poem’s tone is loving and trusting, but as the poem progresses, elements to disrupt the lover’s complacency are increasingly introduced, leading the poem into more pessimistic territory. In setting this Donne poem, I attempted merely to highlight and express the emotional content of the text.

Performance time is about 4'.

Break of Day - John Donne

‘Tis true, ‘tis day; what though it be?

Oh wilt thou therefore rise from me?

Why should we rise because ‘tis light?

Did we lie down because ‘twas night?

Love, which in despite of darkness brought us hither,

Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;

If it could speak as well as spy,

This were the worst that it could say,

That being well I fain would stay,

And that I lov’d my heart and honor so

That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?

Oh that’s the worst disease of love,

The poor, the foul, the false, love can

Admit, but not the busied man.

He which hath business, and makes love, doth do

Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.