I’ll Tell You How the Sun Rose
I’ll Tell You How the Sun Rose - meaning Summary
Sunrise as Gentle Revelation
This poem describes a childlike, imagistic account of sunrise and sunset as a sequence of small, domestic events. The speaker watches the world wake gradually — steeples, hills, birds — and interprets these changes as the sun arriving a ribbon at a time
. The poem then shifts to dusk experienced as a communal crossing, with children climbing toward an unseen shore and a quiet authority guiding them home. Overall it treats cosmic cycles as intimate, gentle processes, blending wonder with a sense of order and benign guardianship at day’s end.
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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