In Occitan poetry, the alba begins with a watchman's cry warning lovers of dawn's approach, as in the anonymous "En un vergier sotz fuella d'albespi" where a lady laments her knight must leave; The alba's defining moment is the cruel intrusion of daylight into the lovers' secret world, as in Giraut de Bornelh's "Reis glorios, veraie lums e clardatz" where the watchman calls to his sleeping friend; Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet balcony scene ("It was the nightingale, and not the lark") echoes the alba tradition in dramatic form, showing its cross-cultural influence; The alba contrasts sharply with the evening song or serena, since where the serena welcomes night for lovers, the alba dreads the dawn that separates them; A modern poet writing an alba might depict city lovers parting at a subway entrance as morning commuters arrive, updating the medieval genre's essential tension between love and the world's demands; The alba teaches students how a single dramatic situation, lovers at dawn, can generate an entire lyric genre with consistent motifs of light, birds, watchmen, and lament across centuries.