Darkness
The theme of darkness pervades "Evening" in both literal and symbolic ways. On a concrete level, the speaker is describing the daily waning of light that occurs between early dusk and nightfall, and the aesthetic and physical effects this process has on ridges and flowers. However, H.D. is known as a highly figurative poet, and this poem's reliance on the human visual perspective, as well as frequent personification of her natural subjects, suggests nightfall's undeniable relevance for humanity. In other words, nightfall can function as an allegory or symbol for similar "fading" processes of the human experience, such as loss, forgetting, repression, and death. The speaker draws the reader into these interpretive possibilities by bridging the gap between natural objects and humans—her diction humanizing the shadows, leaves, and flowers.
The Individual vs. The Universal
"Evening" stages the theme of "individual versus universal" in several ways. In one sense, the speaker's description of nightfall is only one view, and, one could argue, a human view. The loss of light each day is completely universal and experienced by all living beings, and yet this event has different effects on each creature or natural object. The visual experience, the resulting mood, the physical implications, and any other consequences of night's presence, are experienced in diverse ways amongst living beings. An owl, a pool of water just above freezing, and an office worker will be affected in vastly different ways by the fall of evening. Lastly, the poem shows how when darkness falls, the light that clarifies the difference between individual objects and their outlines is lost, and all objects are enveloped in the common category of darkness or those at night's mercy. Much like the human condition of living as an individual and then succumbing to the universal fate of death, nightfall shrouds differences between entities and emphasizes their inevitable, ultimate oneness.
Subjection to Inevitable Forces
The trajectory from light to dark in the lines of "Evening" evokes a sense of night's perpetuity and inevitability. The subjection of both the witness and the natural landscape to time, the turning of the earth, and the sun's retreating gifts alludes to other forces to which we are all inevitably subjected. If one remains with nightfall as a symbol of "fading," then this natural process could function as a metaphor for the fading of memory, the fading of clarity when the mind represses thoughts and feelings, and the fading of our human aliveness into particles of dust after we die. All of these phenomena are completely inevitable, undeniable, and central to the human condition.
