Let Evening Come

Evening serves as an essential, complex theme in “Let Evening Come.” Referenced in the title, evening can on the surface appear as simply the coming night. The poem begins with the fading “light of late afternoon” (Line 1), the lowering of the sun, and the approach of night, complete with stars and moon. However, the theme of evening grows more complex as the poem expands. Evening becomes synonymous with a growing quiet, when the speaker describes in Stanza 4 the fox returning “to its sandy den” (Line 10) and the wind dying down (Line 11). Evening also adopts a greater meaning in the following stanza when even the “air in the lung” (Line 14) welcomes evening.

The theme is greater than a single dark night approaching. Evening grows to represent an eternal stillness and death. This growing representation appears in the final stanza when the speaker implores that the reader “don’t / be afraid” (Lines 16-17) of the coming darkness. Throughout the poem, the speaker readies the reader for coming death. The poem, with a tone of calmness and welcoming, seeks to invite death, for—like coming night—it cannot be avoided. As the speaker says, “Let it come, as it will” (Line 16).