Towards Break of Day
Towards Break of Day - context Summary
Published in the Tower
Published in The Tower (1928), Yeats' short lyric sketches a liminal moment at dawn when two sleepers share different dreams. One remembers a beloved childhood vision of Ben Bulben’s waterfall—idealized and untouchable—while the other dreams of a heroic white stag. The poem contrasts memory and imaginative longing with physical reality, suggesting how love and nostalgia resist being fully grasped as daybreak approaches.
Read Complete AnalysesWas it the double of my dream The woman that by me lay Dreamed, or did we halve a dream Under the first cold gleam of day? I thought: "There is a waterfall Upon Ben Bulben side That all my childhood counted dear; Were I to travel far and wide I could not find a thing so dear.' My memories had magnified So many times childish delight. I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild. Even accusing Heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch. I dreamed towards break of day, The cold blown spray in my nostril. But she that beside me lay Had watched in bitterer sleep The marvellous stag of Arthur, That lofty white stag, leap From mountain steep to steep.
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