aubade: a song or lyric poem lamenting the arrival of dawn to separate two lovers. The form, which has no fixed metrical pattern, flourished in late Middle Ages in France; it was adopted in Germany by 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.