The Night Came Slowly

The maple tree, which is a central feature of the setting in this work, both connects and separates the narrator from The Divinity of Nature. It parallels the narrator, in a sense, symbolizing the narrator’s own status. The narrator is striving to grow. They are reaching toward a new level of awareness. But the narrator is also rooted in their own mortality, their present perception of reality, and they are not quite able to reach the sky—especially not with the disruptions caused by the “fools [who] cumber the Earth” (Paragraph 6).

The maple tree’s leaves in particular represent aspects of perception and sight. As the narrator lies beneath the tree, the only light left after night has arrived comes “filtering through the maple leaves” and through the stars that are “looking down through every cranny” (Paragraph 2). The leaves are a veil of sorts, preventing the narrator from quite fully taking in the light that comes after nightfall. Nature tickles the leaves, creating a sense of fingers brushing: “wind rippled the maple leaves like little warm love thrills” (Paragraph 5). But the leaves remain in place, and the spell ultimately breaks before the narrator can slip fully into slumber.