Emily Dickinson

A Day

A DAY.
I'll tell you how the sun rose,—

ribbon at a time

Sunrise as sequential unfurling—not instant but gradual revelation. The ribbon suggests both the horizontal bands of dawn light and the Victorian practice of untying ribbon-wrapped packages.

A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,

steeples swam in amethyst

The purple-blue light of early dawn makes church steeples appear to float. Dickinson uses gem terminology (amethyst) to describe atmospheric effects—typical of her precise color vocabulary.

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.

purple stile

A stile is a step-structure for climbing over fences in pastures. The sunset becomes a ladder between day and night, echoing Jacob's ladder between earth and heaven.

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

dominie in gray

A dominie is a schoolmaster or clergyman—Dutch Reformed terminology from New England. The gray figure is twilight itself, personified as a minister shepherding his congregation home.

Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Asymmetrical Knowledge

The poem's structure mirrors its argument: sunrise gets 8 lines of precise observation, sunset gets 8 lines of admitted ignorance. "I'll tell you how the sun rose" promises eyewitness testimony, while "But how he set, I know not" confesses failure. This isn't modesty—it's epistemology. Dickinson can describe dawn because she watched it happen, but sunset requires metaphor because direct observation becomes impossible as light fails.

The shift happens at the centered dots (······), which mark more than a time gap. Everything before is literal observation: ribbons of light, purple air, birds singing. Everything after is allegorical substitution: children climbing, a minister closing gates. When Dickinson can't see clearly, she switches from description to parable.

This matches her actual habits. Dickinson rarely left her house after age 30, but she rose early. Dawn was her witnessed event; sunset she experienced from indoors, through windows, at a remove. The poem's structure is autobiographical without being confessional.

Pastoral Theology

The sunset allegory uses Protestant pastoral imagery: a minister (dominie), a flock, evening bars (gates), children as congregation. This is the 23rd Psalm rewritten—"The Lord is my shepherd" becomes a schoolmaster leading children home after a day's lesson. The metaphor works because both sunset and death are departures, and both require a guide.

"Little yellow boys and girls" are sunbeams, but also souls. Yellow is the color of lamplight,童innocence, and in Dickinson's color system, hope. They climb "all the while"—the process takes time, isn't instant. The "other side" is night, but the phrasing deliberately echoes resurrection language ("the other side of Jordan").

Dickinson rarely uses comforting religious imagery without irony, but here it's straightforward. The dominie puts up bars "gently" and "led" (not drove) the flock. This is one of her few poems where the religious metaphor provides actual comfort rather than critique. She can't explain sunset scientifically ("I know not"), so she accepts the theological explanation her culture offers.