I’ll tell you how the sun rose,—
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”
······
But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while
Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.
Credits
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet whose reclusive life in Amherst, Massachusetts belied the extraordinary volume and originality of her work — fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. "A Day" showcases her signature technique of rendering vast natural phenomena through intimate, domestic metaphor, with the setting sun reimagined as a pastoral scene complete with a shepherd-like dominie guiding his flock into the night.
