Mary Elliot interprets the moral cheer of recurring dawn in these
musical lines:
Dawn of the red, red sun in a bleak, abandoned sky
That the moon has lately left and the stars are fast forsaking--
The day is drawing the cloudy lids from his bloodshot eye,
And the world impatient stirs--a tired old sleeper, waking.
O most unwearying prophet, ever-returning morn!
Thou giv’st new life to a world grown old, and marred in making;
With ever an old faith lost, and ever a pang new-born,
But ever a new, new hope to hearts that were well-nigh breaking.
(Text.)
--_The Metropolitan._
(1834)