Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Commentary
Those of us who had the good fortune of spending at least some of our childhood in a rural setting must understand this poem in a different way than those without that experience. Still, any child who has taken the time to listen to a cricket chirping on a hot summer night knows something about this poem.
By showing us the dew gathering, the stars and moon appearing, and a bottle lying in a ditch, Jane Kenyon reveals the enduring peace of the natural world. Her ability to perceive this peace seems especially remarkable in light of her long struggle with bipolar disease. She knew well that the evening and darkness will come, but she also knew that there was comfort in the middle of the darkness.
I can’t read this poem without thinking of Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill. The sense of the sacramental nature of the physical world pervades them both and I suppose for that reason they are two of my favorite poems.
— Kathy
Minstrels Links
Jane Kenyon:
Poem #474, Otherwise
Poem #1004, Finding a Long Gray Hair
Poem #1066, Let Evening Come
Dylan Thomas:
Poem #14, Prologue
Poem #38, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Poem #58, The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
Poem #138, Fern Hill
Poem #225, Poem In October
Poem #270, Under Milk Wood
Poem #335, After the Funeral (In memory of Ann Jones)
Poem #405, Altarwise by Owl-Light (Stanzas I - IV)
Poem #476, In my craft or sullen art
Poem #568, Especially when the October Wind
Poem #1035, The Hand that Signed the Paper
Show 4 commentsHide comments
From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Chris Douglass · 28 March 2006
Jane Kenyon wrote this poem for my friend, her minister, Jack Jensen. He was dying from cancer, and she wrote this poem and brought it to him after one of his long stays in the Dartmouth Hospital cancer wing.
The last time I saw Jack alive - during February vacation - he showed me the poem. He, the minister to so many lost souls, sighed. He could not put into words the loss that he believed he would have to face soon. Dylan’s poem “Do not go gently into the night” was more his tone, though he hid his feelings to protect his wife and family from his fate.
I see him standing on the porch, weak and diminished, looking out towards me as I drove away. I never saw him again in the flesh. I have felt diminished ever since. A light had been extinguished in my life.
Jane loved Jack and wrote a tribute to his approaching death. I wish that both Jack and I could have shared her faith as so beautifully captured in her poem and in her hymns that she sang Jack on the last night of his life.
Respectfully submitted,
Chris Douglass
a friend of Jack Jensen for three decades and an acquaintance of Jane Kenyon based on that friendship.
Donald Hall and I spoke at Jack’s funeral.
Jimgold · 6 April 2006
“Let evening come” evoked an emotion in me that I have not yet analyzed. I can say that it takes an effort of will to remember to breathe just now. It is that good.
Jim
Byron Keith · 25 October 2006
Jane Kenyon wrote this poem in response to finding out that her husband had terminal cancer. A gentleman named Brian Holmes set the poem to music and around the first performance, Jane, herself, died of cancer. Her husband survived her. Holmes’ setting is lush and beautiful. I know it because my choir has performed it - www.choralproject.org.
—Keith
carol251 · 23 September 2007
I’d never read Fern Hill, and after reading your comments on Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come..” I linked over to it. Amazing how we influence each other - Kenyon MUST have known this poem. This would make a great discussion in my poetry group here at a retirement home full of retired missionaries, ministers and just plain folks with a love of literature, theology, psychology and discussion!
Thanks for your internet pages.