D. H. Lawrence watches Parliament Hill at evening as mist and night swallow the city. The houses dissolve, the air is thick and dirty, and only a few reddish lights still hold out against darkness. The scene feels hopeless and wintry, and the city seems to rot away rather than simply disappear. Lawrence compares this fading to the way a body dies once death enters its “citadel of delight”—the place where life and pleasure once lived. By the end, the town is wrapped in a shroud, with greenish, smouldering light and scattered lamps giving off a ghostly glow. The mood is eerie, heavy, and quietly sorrowful: the speaker sees the coming of night as a kind of dying, not a peaceful rest but a slow corrosion. The city becomes a body, and the dark becomes death.
Parliament Hill in the Evening — Summary
The houses fade in a melt of mist Blotching the thick, soiled air With reddish places that still resist The Night's slow care.
The hopeless, wintry twilight fades, The city corrodes out of sight As the body corrodes when death invades That citadel of delight.
Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread Through the shroud of the town, as slow Night-lights hither and thither shed Their ghastly glow.