"The Dawn! The Dawn! The crimson-tinted, comes
Out of
the low still skies, over the hills,
Manhattan's roofs and spires and
cheerless domes!
The Dawn! My spirit to its spirit thrills.
Almost
the mighty city is asleep,
No pushing crowd, no tramping, tramping
feet.
But here and there a few cars groaning creep
Along, above,
and underneath the street..."
These eight bars are from a Claude McKay poem entitled, "Dawn in New York". The poem is written as a narrative poem. Claude is witnessing the sunrise, as the sun rays blanket New York City. He is very observant and explains to us the atmosphere that was surrounding him that morning when he watched the sunrise in New York City. I can picture him, standing out on his balcony and shouting because the sunrise he is witnessing is so amazing. He uses many descriptive words in this poem to describe the way the city looks at dawn such as "crimson tinted", referring to the sky. Claude describes it as being very quiet. “…Almost the mighty city is asleep…” . New York is supposes to be the city that never sleeps, but at dawn it seems as though it has fallen asleep. There are no people walking the streets, only cars. He uses personification when describing the cars, "...a few cars groaning creep along...". He uses an A, B rhyme scheme, along with end rhyme in this poem. Claude uses repetition with the word dawn, which is an important theme of the story so it makes sense that he repeats the word throughout the poem. The overall context of the poem is, a man that is excited and amazed at the sight of a natural beauty, a sunrise, over one of the most amazing cities in the world. I think he is joyous to finally “make” it to the city.
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