The dew is on the lotus!--Rise, Great Sun! And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave.
Edwin Arnold The Light of Asia, Book VIII (1879)
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When and why it was written
- When
- The closing lines of The Light of Asia, Edwin Arnold's 1879 poem on the Buddha.
- Why
- Arnold ends the poem with an image of the self dissolving like a dewdrop into the sea.
What it means
The dewdrop that slips into the shining sea is one of the best-known images of release in English poetry. Nothing is lost; it becomes part of something larger.
It is a morning image, and it suits a morning page.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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The Light of Asia, 1879
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