Before the poem says anything about work, it says "Welcome." The first word is addressed to the sun, and that sets the tone. A man who has spent the day felling and trimming wood greets the evening as a friend, not as a release from misery. The sun is "red and roundy," a word that makes the whole sky sound like something a child might draw. The speaker's claim is modest and complete: "Now my hard day's work is done, / I'm as happy as the best." He admits the day was hard, but he doesn't complain about it. What he wants to talk about is what comes after.
The poem follows his thoughts as he moves from the wood toward the cottage. He is pulled in two directions. By day he loves the oaks, and he is sorry to leave the birds, whose "pretty song" gives him pain to abandon. But the cottage, where he can see "the chimney smokes," is "by far the prettiest spot." The smoke is a neat detail, because it is the first visible sign of home and it promises warmth before he arrives. From there the poem looks ahead. Judy will be "looking out / Every now-and-then for me," the table is "ready set," and supper is "hanging on the hooks." The children, "little prattlers," will tease him "to talk and sing." Almost all of this is imagined, and the speaker is walking into a scene he has already pictured.
The form suits this contentment. The poem is made of quatrains rhymed ABAB, and the lines are short, seven syllables each, with a stress on the first syllable. Say "Dropping lowly in the west" aloud and you hear a steady beat, like a tired man's footsteps, or a nursery rhyme. The rhymes are plain and sturdy: sun and done, chair and there, pain and again. One slightly loose pairing, "tongues" and "songs," shows that the poet cared more about natural speech than polish. The ending of the second stanza shows the rhythm doing real work. "Bill and mittens, lie ye there!" closes with a thump, like tools being dropped by the door.
That line also shows how the speaker talks to things. He addresses his billhook and gloves, and he addresses the birds, as if everything around him could hear. His speech to the birds is the most playful moment in the poem. He tells them to "hold your tongues" and to stop singing until he returns, then adds that people who "never care to drop a crumb" aren't worthy of their songs. The joke is gentle, and it also says something about him. He feeds the birds, and the exchange of crumbs for song is the kind of fair dealing he values. The repeated word "little" (little birds, little cot, little prattlers) wraps the whole world of the poem in affection.
The ending is where the poem is most interesting. After the children ask him to sing, the first two stanzas come back word for word. The poem is called a "night song," and the repetition makes it one. We have just heard that he will be asked to sing, and then we hear what sounds like his song, built around the sun, the chair and the dropped tools. The circle also matches his day. Work leads to home, home leads to rest, and tomorrow, as he promises the birds, "is not long."
What makes the poem significant is how little it asks for. The speaker has no grievance and no escape fantasy, and he doesn't need to be pitied. His pleasures are a chair, a meal and children who want a song, and he states them with confidence. The line "as happy as the best" quietly claims that a labourer's evening is worth as much as anyone's. Clare is known as a poet of the English countryside and rural life, and here he gives the working man his own voice and lets him sound happy without sounding foolish.