"I'll tell you how the Sun rose" by Emily Dickinson

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 -



Source of the text - The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 95.

TJB: This two-part poem sings of sunrise as enthralling, inebriating, alliterated pageant, then sunset as a shepherd leading her sheep back home.