Smoke blacked houses, each one sleeps. Dust and gust and the prairie wind sweeps Through the silence. And on its breath blows an old refrain Wheels pounding Whistle sounding Lonely wheels and moaning whistle Midnight train.
"Night" is a small, quiet snapshot of a prairie town after dark. The houses are sooty and still, each one asleep, while dust and wind sweep across the open land. Then a sound arrives: a train, heard but never seen. The poem imitates it, with "wheels pounding" and "whistle sounding" breaking the stillness in short, rhythmic bursts, almost like the chug of the engine itself.
The speaker doesn't say how they feel outright, but the mood comes through in the words. The wheels are "lonely," the whistle is "moaning," and the sound is called an "old refrain," as if the town has heard this same song on countless nights. That gives the scene a hushed, melancholy feeling, tinged with a kind of familiarity. Everyone is asleep, yet something is passing through, heading somewhere else. The poem seems to suggest that loneliness and distance are part of the night itself, carried on the wind and the whistle.