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A Day
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.
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Dickinson adopts her playful, little girl persona
in this charming fantasy. For most readers, there are no hidden meanings, no symbols, just whimsy and pleasure in the
beauty of sunrise and sunset.
If you've ever been up at dawn, you know that the sun's rays can appear as thin upward reaching
streaks. She calls this phenomenon "ribbons"; if you took Core Studies 1, you may remember that
Homer calls it "rosy fingers." The ribbon image is continued with the hills untying their bonnets, that
is, the colors of dawn are getting brighter and the streaks more numerous. And dawn signals birds to
start their day.
The description of sunset picks up an image of the dawn; the amethyst of dawn has darkened to purple. The stile
(steps to climb over a fence) represents narrow clouds. The color of sunset as the children climb up is
brighter than when they come down the other side of the stile, because the sun is lower and darkness is
falling. The children are yellow (the color of the sun) climbing up. On the other side, a "grey" dominie
or clergyman takes charge of the children. The reference to a dominie builds on the earlier steeple reference, both
being religious images.
If you wish, you can read this poem symbolically.
Sunrise and sunset are traditional symbols for birth and death, and Dickinson
does use this symbolism in many poems. Ribbons, figuratively rays
of light, may symbolize youth's vanity and innocence.
Steeples symbolize religion or God. You may take this symbol even further; because steeples reach heavenward, they may
be interpeted as humanity's yearning for heaven or union
with God. In such a reading, the activity of the squirrels may stand for the frenetic pace of everyday activities. Boblinks symbolize
dawn. The "dominie" could be the call of God or perhaps death, a caring, kindly figure.
I incline to Freud's opinion that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a symbol for a penis (I'm not
suggesting a Freudian reading of the steeple). What I mean by the cigar reference is, even in
Emily Dickinson a sunrise and a sunset may just be that--the depiction of the sun rising and
the sun setting. You can decide for yourself how to interpret this poem.
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