Note 3 — EXPRESSION IN POETRY.
Reading edition
It is noticeable that those short passages in which Shakespeare describes a sunrise all take colour from the circumstances of the dramatis personæ. Shakespeare has not a pigeon-hole for sunrises from which he draws indiscriminately at need. To the ghost in Hamlet the morning comes as the twilight of night, which is his day, and so he expresses it by reference to the paling light of the glow-worm:—
“The glow-worm shews the matin to be near, And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.”
A remarkable contrast to the lively image of Horatio:—
“But look, the morn in russet mantle clad Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill!”