O, thou art fairer than the evening air

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

Christopher Marlowe (1565-1593): Faustus.

Those evening bells! those evening bells!

How many a tale their music tells

Of youth and home, and that sweet time

When last I heard their soothing chime!

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): Those Evening Bells.

Faintly as tolls the evening chime,

Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): A Canadian Boat-Song.

Come in the evening, or come in the morning;

Come when you 're looked for, or come without warning.

Thomas O. Davis (1814-1845): The Welcome.

The dews of the evening most carefully shun,—

Those tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.

Earl Of Chesterfield (1694-1773): Advice to a Lady in Autumn.

And as an ev'ning dragon came,

Assailant on the perched roosts

And nests in order rang'd

Of tame villatic fowl.

John Milton (1608-1674): Samson Agonistes. Line 1692.

I have touched the highest point of all my greatness;

And from that full meridian of my glory

I haste now to my setting: I shall fall

Like a bright exhalation in the evening,

And no man see me more.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2.

At shut of evening flowers.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ix. Line 278.

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray

Had in her sober livery all things clad;

Silence accompany'd; for beast and bird,

They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,

Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;

She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleas'd. Now glow'd the firmament

With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led

The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,

Rising in clouded majesty, at length

Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light,

And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 598.

Never morning wore

To evening, but some heart did break.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): In Memoriam. vi. Stanza 2.

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray

Had in her sober livery all things clad;

Silence accompany'd; for beast and bird,

They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,

Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;

She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleas'd. Now glow'd the firmament

With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led

The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,

Rising in clouded majesty, at length

Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light,

And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 598.

My life is like the summer rose

That opens to the morning sky,

But ere the shades of evening close

Is scattered on the ground—to die.

Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847): My Life is like the Summer Rose.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,

The moon takes up the wondrous tale,

And nightly to the listening earth

Repeats the story of her birth;

While all the stars that round her burn,

And all the planets in their turn,

Confirm the tidings as they roll,

And spread the truth from pole to pole.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Ode.

Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down,

Where a green grassy turf is all I crave,

With here and there a violet bestrewn,

Fast by a brook or fountain's murmuring wave;

And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave!

James Beattie (1735-1803): The Minstrel. Book ii. Stanza 17.

There is an evening twilight of the heart,

When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest.

Alfred Bunn (1790-1860): Twilight.

I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,

And give them voice and utterance once again.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,

Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,

And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn

Throws up a steamy column, and the cups

That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,

So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book iv. The Winter Evening. Line 34.

Was never evening yet

But seemed far beautifuller than its day.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): The Ring and the Book. Pompilia. Line 357.