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

That 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 -

 

Definitions

stile: a set of steps for crossing over a pasture fence or wall

Dominie: a schoolmaster

Bars: rails used to close off a gap in a pasture fence

 

 

Exemplified in this poem is her pure and beautiful descriptive talent. She looks at something simple and everyday, with the eyes of a child exploring and seeing these things for the first time. "I'll tell you how the Sun rose," she declares, and compares the sun's rays to ribbons that are let loose one at a time. Then she proceeds to describe how the day became lighter, lighting steeple tops and hill tops first, streaks of the sunrise becoming brighter and filling the morning sky. Suddenly the sun's appearance spreads quickly; she likens it to the spreading of "news" that runs "like Squirrels". And the birds start to sing. 

 

Even though she cannot "know" for sure how the sun set, she can imagine and report what she thinks she sees. A protracted schoolchildren metaphor is used to describe the colors in the evening sky - the way yellow light appears through bars of horizontal cloud, and eventually fall into shadow. She compares the yellow light to schoolchildren, climbing a stile, crossing to the other side of the pasture wall where the gray-clad schoolmaster closes up the pasture for the night and shepherds the students away.