Nobody in Hazel McKay's "the end of the day" is in a hurry. Over twenty lines, a speaker watches an ordinary evening unfold, from the low sun of afternoon to the stars of midnight. The central idea is that a day doesn't simply stop. It ends in stages, each gentle enough to be savoured. The title promises an ending, but the poem delivers a long, quiet handing-over from sun to moon. Oddly, it counts the whole stretch from afternoon to midnight as "the end of the day", as if the speaker wants to make the ending last.
The structure carries most of that idea. Each of the four stanzas has five lines and follows the same pattern. A line is stated and immediately repeated ("The sun is nearly gone, / The sun is nearly gone"). Three lines of description follow, then a short closing line names the time: "It's afternoon," "It's sunset," "It's twilight," "It's midnight." These labels work like a clock hand moved forward one notch at a time, and because they always arrive last, the reader waits for them. The doubled opening lines slow things further, as though the speaker is lingering over what they have just said. Read aloud, the poem has the rocking pull of a lullaby, which suits a poem about settling down for the night.
The repetition isn't mechanical, though. Small changes in wording show the light draining away. In stanza two the sun is "nearly gone." In stanza three the same line returns with "nearly" dropped and "Now" added: "Now the sun is gone." That tiny swap is the poem's quietest turning point, the moment "almost" becomes "done." The poem also turns the sky upside down. In the first stanza "The sun is low in the sky"; in the last, "The moon is high in the sky." The repeated phrase stays put while the heavenly body swaps places, like one side of a seesaw rising as the other sinks.
The verbs are well chosen. "Lowering," "rising" and "glowing" are all -ing words, so the actions seem to be happening as we read rather than finished. The phrase "slowly lowering" is made of soft, rolling l sounds, so the line itself seems to sink. Calling the horizon a "rim" makes the sun sit on an edge like a coin balanced on the lip of a cup, a small image that makes the sunset feel precarious and suspenseful. Then, in the next stanza, the stars arrive as something that "glows" rather than shines, which suggests a warm light, not a cold one.
The speaker's body appears only twice, and both moments matter. In stanza one, "The light is soft on my cheek" is a sense of touch, the last warmth of the day. In stanza four, "A nightingale sings into my ear" is a sense of hearing. As sight fades, other senses take over, and the poem moves from warmth on the skin to sound close to the head. The phrase "into my ear" makes the song feel almost whispered, meant for one listener. The nightingale is a traditional bird of night song, so its arrival at midnight feels right.
There is no regular rhyme scheme here. The poem holds together through repetition instead of matching end-sounds, and "sky" is the only word that returns at line-ends in a way you can hear. Lines are short and mostly plain, with many single-syllable words, and the constant "It's" gives each statement a calm, declarative ring. Nothing in the language suggests fear of the dark. Midnight arrives with a high moon, glowing stars and a singing bird, and the poem closes on that image without any note of sadness or loss.
That is where its significance lies. The poem's strength is its simplicity. With no difficult vocabulary and no rhyme, it shows how repetition and tiny variations can build a mood and a sense of time passing. It also asks something of its reader: to notice the evening as it happens, stage by stage, and to treat the end of the day as something to watch rather than mourn.