“Break of Day” is what contemporary literary scholars would term an aubade. Donne plays a variation on a verse form that, although it had existed for more than two centuries by his era, would not actually be categorized and defined until more than two centuries after his death. The aubade, which comes from the French word for morning song, is a poem about the moment when, with the coming of the dawn, lovers who have spent the night together must depart from each other. Usually one of the lovers, most often the female, is still asleep. Traditionally, the enemy is the bright, unforgiving breaking white light of the sun; indeed the word “aubade” derives from a Latin word meaning “white.” In that way, an aubade both is and is not a love poem. The depth of the lovers’ goodbye alone measures the depth of the lovers’ emotions. The measure of how I love you is how reluctantly I must leave you.

In its way, the aubade juxtaposes intimacy with isolation, love with loneliness, satisfaction with emptiness. The poem takes place at that moment in the difficult in-between, lovers suddenly, awkwardly too distant from the magic of love and too near the reality of separation.