Morning barely arrives in this poem before it vanishes. The speaker pictures it as a hesitant stranger on the horizon, hovering just short of dawn, too fleeting to settle and quick to change course. What follows is darkness, and the poem treats it as something heavy and almost forceful. Its "quiet oppression" seems to press nature into a bow, muting her call and drawing the light out of every eye.
The speaker's feeling is a mix of loss and unease. Light is something we hope will stay, and here it won't. The final lines, with their "dead, still, silence" that is "induced upon us," suggest something imposed from outside, not a peaceful rest. We don't get to choose it.
The mood is hushed, eerie and slightly suffocating. Slow, soft sounds and the repeated "s" in words like "silence" and "slowly silencing" make the poem feel as if it is lowering its own voice, leaving the reader inside the same stillness it describes.