Let Evening Come

“Let Evening Come” is a six-stanza poem with three lines per stanza. The poem has a varied meter, alternating between iambic and anapestic feet. The poem—and every stanza except for Stanza 5—begins with the anaphoric “Let” (Line 1). By repeating this word (“Let the light” [Line 1]; “Let the cricket” [Line 4], etc.) and the titular phrase “Let evening come,” Kenyon uses anaphora to persuade her reader to accept and invite evening or life’s end. For example, in Line 1 the speaker resigns themself to allowing the light to lower when they state, “Let the light of late afternoon / shine through chinks in the barn” (Lines 1-2). Throughout the poem Kenyon paints a scene, and it begins with this light “moving / up the bales as the sun moves down” (Lines 2-3). From line to line, the speaker creates a picture of the coming night on a rural farm.

Stanza 2 continues and expands the image of the nearing evening when the speaker describes the crickets beginning to sing, “chafing / as a woman takes up her needles” (Lines 4-5). The speaker uses a simile, a literary device that compares two unlike things by using the word “like” or “as,” when they compare the cricket moving its legs back and forth (to make a chirp) with the movement of a woman’s needles back and forth as she knits. At the end of Stanza 2, the speaker uses the titular phrase, “Let evening come,” a phrase repeated in the poem two more times (at the end of Stanza 4 and 5, concluding the poem).

“Let Evening Come” oscillates between describing the domestic and the natural world. In Stanza 3, the poem turns to the “hoe abandoned / in the long grass” (Lines 7-8). The sun has sunk, and night is coming on at the start of the stanza when the speaker encourages, “Let dew collect” (Line 7) on the hoe. The “stars appear” (Line 8) and “the moon [discloses] her silver horn” (Line 9). In all these instances, the speaker uses the repeated word “Let” (“Let dew” [Line 7]; “Let the stars” [Line 8]) as though they hold the power to grant—or allow—these natural phenomena the ability to occur. By repeating the word “Let,” the speaker’s allowance of these things to happen creates a tone of acceptance, invitation, and peace with time and the coming and going of natural occurrences (like the rising and setting moon and sun) beyond one’s control.

Stanza 4 marks the second repetition of the phrase “Let evening come” (Line 12). The stanza calls the fox to “go back to its sandy den” (Line 10) and the environment to become peaceful: “Let the wind die down” (Line 11), the speaker states, and “Let the shed / go black inside” (Lines 11-12). In this stanza, the darkness surrounds, and the poem has transitioned in time from the lowering afternoon light (“Let the light of late afternoon” [Line 1]) to night’s arrival with the stars, moon, and the black shed. Again, this stanza includes both natural imagery and imagery of the domestic, highlighting that evening—or a life ended—comes both to nature and to objects in one’s life that are no longer useful (“the hoe abandoned” in Line 7, for example).

The fifth stanza breaks from the established form when it begins with the words “To the bottle in the ditch” (Line 13) rather than the repeated word “Let.” Stanza 5 begins with an address to the bottle, “to the scoop” (Line 13), and “to air” (Line 14). Kenyon varies the form and addresses three subjects directly, beginning with a piece of litter (the bottle), transitioning to a scoop in a bin of oats, and finally ending with the very intimate “air in the lung” (Line 14). The images grow from distant to close (bottle to the air one breathes) and represent a tonal shift that carries into the final stanza.

Stanza 6 concludes the poem as the speaker admits, “Let it come, as it will” (Line 16). The “it” (Line 16) refers to evening, and by stating “as it will” (Line 16), the speaker admits their inability to stop time from passing or night from coming. However, the symbol of evening takes on new meaning when the speaker states, “and don’t / be afraid” (Lines 16-17). Evening—through the imagery of darkness, settling, and quiet—symbolizes not just the coming night but also death approaching. The poem concludes, “God does not leave us / comfortless, so let evening come” (Lines 17-18). Kenyon’s introduction of God in the penultimate line of the poem supports the reading that “evening” stands for the larger symbol of death. The poem transitions at the end to a speaker’s reckoning and acceptance of the end of one’s life. Far from fearful or frantic, the poem’s tone is calm, controlled, peaceful, and even inviting of the moment when one’s life will extinguish like the lowering light at the start of the poem.