The Horns of the Morning

Today is Walker's birthday, and he is thirteen. He's my herald of the morning, my optimistic, sunny child. Even on the day he was born, he announced his imminent arrival as soon as I woke up. Today I decree that this poem, by Philip Larkin, is in honor of the anniversary of his birth:

The horns of the morning
Are blowing, are shining,
The meadows are bright
With the coldest dew;
The dawn reassembles,
Like the clash of gold cymbals
The sky spreads its vans out
The sun hangs in view.

Here, where no love is,
All that was hopeless
And kept me from sleeping
Is frail and unsure;
For never so brilliant,
Neither so silent
Nor so unearthly, has
Earth grown before.

My whole family particularly enjoys the use of the word "van" as in the front of something, the "vanguard," since the time Ron was reading The Lord of the Rings out loud and he read "Aragorn was in the van" and six-year-old Eleanor stopped us and asked whether she should really be picturing him in a minivan driving alongside the rest of the army!

I like the last four lines of the poem, in which the whole world seems to be holding its breath, "waiting for the miraculous birth." Well, it was for me, anyway.