A Day
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 dominic in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.
About this poem
This version of "A Day" appeared in the 1891 edition of "Poems by Emily Dickinson," edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Between 1850 and 1866, 10 Emily Dickinson poems appeared in newspapers, all anonymously and probably without her knowledge.
About Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson authored nearly 1,800 poems during her lifetime. She is considered one of America's most important poets. Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Mass., and died in Amherst in 1886.
(Painting by Faria Binte Firoz)