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 crickets 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.

-- Jane Kenyon

Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament, -- the gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early and kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world, -- healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since last he heard that note?

The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he that can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, "There is one of us well, at any rate," -- and with a sudden gush return to my senses.

-- HDT, from Walking