#Just a Little Juxtaposition
“Purple” was one of two other words (“amber” and “gold”) that Dickinson was considering to describe “mystery”. Although she eventually went with “amber”, it seems the cool-toned, odd-one-out “purple” stuck with her, as this color shows up in the version sent to Mabel Todd in the form of “Amethyst”, a purple stone. This word stuck out to me when I first read over the description of sunset because I’m used to visualizing it as this orange glow. It seems the original version follows this characterization with words like “amber” and “gold”, but a duskier visual persists in the second version. They seem to be almost two different personalities, two sides of the same coin, beginning and end. Instead of celebrating only the brightness and warmth of the sun, a romantic image, the second version seems to welcome the arrival of night’s purples, a look into the darker side of things and embracing of a transition into the unknown, filled with “moats of mystery”.