The speaker looks back over a life made up of meetings and partings, of turning old album pages and trying to recall faces and scenes. These small acts of remembering, the poem suggests, are what a lifetime really amounts to. Life is then pictured as a long gallery: we are pushed forward by the years so quickly that we only ever glimpse part of each scene. The sun moves steadily on its course, but human life is overtaken by evening. The mood is wistful and resigned rather than bitter. The closing couplet turns to dreaming—being rudely awakened, then returning to peaceful sleep. That image seems to long for rest after life’s jolts, and to imagine death not as terror but as a calm, dearly bought return to stillness.
The Close of Day — Summary
“To meet and then to part,” and that is all, To slowly turn an album’s crusty leaves, To see the faces and the scenes recall, Are things that in a lifetime one achieves.
To wander down a broad-arch gallery, Viewing the scenes from life on either side, Pressed forward with the force of years to see But part of every picture when espied.
The big sun in its blue dome keeps its course, Without a falter moves upon its way. So human life, returning to its source, Is overtaken by the close of day. To dream, and being rudely waked from thought, Return to peaceful dreaming dearly bought.