A Night — there lay the Days between —
The Day that was Before —
And Day that was Behind — were One —
And now — ’twas Night — was here —
Slow — Night — that must be watched away —
As Grains upon a shore —
Too imperceptible to note —
Till it be night — no more —
An interpretation of F609:
For ED, the first “Day” of this poem began in March 1855, when she heard Wadsworth preach in Philadelphia. That day ended for her on May 1, 1862 when Wadsworth “abandoned” her by sailing from New York, bound for San Francisco. She thought he had left her for the rest of her life. She hoped the “Night” between his “abandonment” and her death would end their separation and that Wadsworth would meet and marry her in Heaven, as he promised. The second “Day” of the poem presumably would begin when she died (May 15, 1886) and last for eternity.
When ED composed this poem in 1863, the looming real days between May 1, 1862 and her death (8780 days) would feel like “Grains [of sand] upon a shore”, too numerous to count. But then, like Dante, she would emerge from her dark “Night” of abandonment into the bright “Day” of Heaven.
Of course, Dante and Virgil emerged from Hell at night and “looked up at the stars”. ED would emerge from her long “Night” of abandonment into Heaven’s eternal “Day”. Also, when she wrote this poem in 1863, she did not know when Wadsworth or she would die, but he had promised to meet and marry her on the day the last one died.
In her vivid imagination, the two “Days” in the poem merged to become “One” (Line 3).
How could anyone torture line structure into such powerful words of love? A comma clarifies Line 1, but I’m glad ED left it out: “A Night — there lay, the Days between —”
Shakespeare would be proud had a sleepily anxious Juliet said Lines 5-8, especially that last one: “Till it be night — no more —”. To paraphrase Anonymous (F605, 6/16/2015), “The poem ends with exact rhymes (“Before”, “shore”, “more”) — almost like the end of a scene from Shakespeare where exact rhymes signal the transition to a new scene.”
Reading Stanza 2, we want to hear “Washed away” as grains of sand slowly vanish, one-by-one, night-by-night, out to sea. Instead, we get “Watched away”, an active/passive verb that reassures the poet; when the last grain is gone, Heaven’s light will flood Earth’s night, and she will meet and marry the man she loves, Charles Wadsworth. Until then, time slowly passes,
“Too imperceptible to note —
Till it be night — no more —”