"But as he was being shoved into the crate, he looked up at Charlotte and gave her a wink. She knew he was saying goodbye in the only way he could. And she knew her children were safe. [...] Next day, as the Ferris Wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The fair grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. [...] Every day, Wilbur would stand and look at the torn, empty web, and a lump would come to his throat. No one had ever had such a friend- so affectionate, so loyal, and so skillful. [...] As Wilbur watched, the [baby] spider let go of the fence and rose to the air. [...] Wilbur was frantic. Charlotte's babies were disappearing at a great rate" (White 171-179)
Although the relationship between Wilbur and Charlotte in Charlotte's Web is not as romantic as the relationship between the speaker and the woman in "Tonight", there is still the same amount of love prior to the separation of each couple, just in a different way. In the passage, Wilbur realizes the positive effect that Charlotte had on him and acknowledges the significance that their loving friendship possessed. Similarly, the speaker in the poem expresses that he did not have a way of controlling the feelings he had for this woman he is speaking of and it shows how important their relationship was to him. In the Charlotte's Web passage, Charlotte passes away at the fairgrounds, and there is a repeated image of the fairgrounds being deserted and forlorn. This helps to highlight the fact that E.B. White wants the reader to associate the idea of a deserted area with Wilbur's feelings regarding Charlotte's death, and it again emphasizes Charlotte's importance in Wilbur's life. In the poem, there is a repeated image of the night and its immensity which helps to show that the speaker feels their love is as endless and immense as the night sky.
However, in the passage, Wilbur agrees to take care of Charlotte's babies and seems devastated when he thinks that they are going to leave him. This shows that he wants to cling on to his relationship for as long as possible because he wants to continually renew his memories of her through her children. This contrasts with the poem because the speaker in "Tonight" wants to put the pain he feels in the past, which is expressed in the last stanza, because the separation between him and the woman negatively affected him because their initial love was so strong.
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