Aubade [oh-bahd]
is a song or lyric poem lamenting the arrival of dawn to separate two lovers.
The form, which has no fixed metrical pattern, flourished in the late Middle
Ages in France; it was adopted in Germany by Wolfram von Eschenbach and in
England by Chaucer, whose Troilus and Criseyde includes a fine aubade. Later
English examples include Donne's The Sunne Rising' and Act III scene v of
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.