From the porch of a cabin or any place on the farm where the shades of day fade into night and the sky turns yellow and red as the sun retreats, you can enjoy the conversion of light into darkness like no place else. Night brings on a magnificent change in the landscape in shades of black and gray with a chorus of sounds not heard in the day. Insects and birds that have lain silent all day awaken and break forth in nature’s song. Seldom do the sounds and lights of transport vehicles break the moment on our lane. Those of you that live in urban areas do not realize how much different the nights are on a farm than in your environment. Except for the occasional passing train in the distance signaling as it crosses our country lane, nothing has changed here at night since the beginning.

Night

A poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Into the darkness and the hush of the night,
Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away.
The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light,
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the fight,
the unprofitable splendor and display
The agitations, the cares that prey
Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight
The better life begins; the world no more
Molests us; all its records we erase.
From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o're
With trivial incidents of time and place
and lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.