SOURCE: Harris, Judith. “Vision, Voice, and Soul-Making in ‘Let Evening Come’.” In Bright Unequivocal Eye: Poems, Papers, and Remembrances from the First Jane Kenyon Conference, edited by Bert G. Hornback, pp. 63-8. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.

In the following essay, Harris lauds the serenity in the face of an inevitable death, and the calm assurances of solace in Kenyon's poem, “Let Evening Come.”

Let the light of late afternoon shine through the 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 the 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...