Monty Python 1983 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Groucho Marx - John Betjeman - John Milton - Thomas Gray - William Taylor Collins - William Wordsworth - Dixon of Dock Green TV - Charles Cotton - William Cowper - Oscar Hammerstein - Lord Byron - Alfred Lord Tennyson - The Remains of the Day 1993 & Kazuo Ishiguro - William Wordsworth - T S Eliot - J G Ballard - Anthony Burgess - Thomas Hardy - John Kerouac -
Grim Reaper: I am the Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper. I am Death ...
Guest #4: Well that’s cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn’t it. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life 1983 starring Graham Chapman & John Cleese & Terry Gilliam & Eric Idle & Terry Jones & Michael Palin & Carol Cleveland & Patricia Quinn & Judy Loe & Simon Jones & Matt Frewer & Jane Leeves et al, director Terry Jones
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Children’s Hour, 1859
I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it. Groucho Marx
And low the mists of evening lie
And lightly skims the midge. John Betjeman, 1906-1984, Henley-on-Thames, 1945
Now came still evening on, and twilight grey
Had in her sober livery all things clad. John Milton, Paradise Lost 4:598
Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus that led
The starry host, rode brightest till the moon
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light,
And o’er the dark her silver mangle threw. ibid. 4:604
Sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild, then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train. ibid. 4:646
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimm’ring landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand’ring near her secret bow’r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs and dying gales,
O nymph reserv’d, while now the bright-hair’d sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O’erhang his wavy bed:
Now air is hush’d, save where the weak-ey’d bat,
With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,
As oft he rises ’midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid compos’d,
To breathe some soften’d strain,
Whose numbers stealing thro’ thy dark’ning vale
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As musing slow, I hail
Thy genial lov’d return!
For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and elves
Who slept in flow’rs the day,
And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,
And sheds the fresh’ning dew, and, lovelier still,
The pensive Pleasures sweet,
Prepare thy shadowy car.
Then lead, calm vot’ress, where some sheety lake
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow’d pile,
Or upland fallows grey
Reflect its last cool gleam.
But when chill blust’ring winds, or driving rain,
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut
That from the mountain’s side
Views wilds, and swelling floods,
And hamlets brown, and dim-discover’d spires,
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.
While Spring shall pour his show’rs, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve;
While Summer loves to sport
Beneath thy ling’ring light;
While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or Winter, yelling thro’ the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train,
And rudely rends thy robes;
So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp’d Health,
Thy gentlest influence own,
And hymn thy fav’rite name! William Taylor Collins, Ode to Evening
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration. William Wordsworth, sonnet ‘It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free’
Meek Nature’s evening comment on the shows
That for oblivion take their daily birth
From all the fuming vanities of earth. William Wordsworth, ‘Sky, Prospect from the Plain of France’
Evening, all. Jack Warner as Sergeant Dixon of BBC’s Dixon of Dock Green
The shadows now so long do grow,
That brambles like tall cedars show,
Molehills seem mountains, and the ant
Appears a monstrous elephant. Charles Cotton, 1630-87
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bibbling 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, The Task, 1785
Some enchanted evening,
You may see a stranger,
You may see a stranger,
Across a crowded room. Oscar Hammerstein, 1949 song
Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray. Lord Byron, Bride of Abydos
It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale’s high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers’ vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word;
And gentle winds, and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue,
And in the heaven that clear obscure,
So softly dark, and darkly pure.
Which follows the decline of day,
As twilight melts beneath the moon away. Lord Byron, Parisina st1
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses l54
For a great many people the evening is the best time of the day. The part they most look forward to. The Remains of the Day 1993 starring Anthony Hopkins & Emma Thompson & James Fox & Christopher Reeve & Peter Vaughan & Hugh Grant & John Haycraft & Caroline Hunt & Ben Chaplin & Tim Pigott-Smith et al, director James Ivory