A Thunder-Storm
The wind begun to rock the grassWith threatening tunes and low, --He flung a menace at the earth,A menace at the sky.
The leaves unhooked themselves from treesAnd started all abroad;The dust did scoop itself like handsAnd throw away the road.
The wagons quickened on the streets,The thunder hurried slow;The lightning showed a yellow beak,And then a livid claw.
The birds put up the bars to nests,The cattle fled to barns;There came one drop of giant rain,And then, as if the hands
That held the dams had parted hold,The waters wrecked the sky,But overlooked my father's house,Just quartering a tree.
About this text
A Thunder-Storm is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete, Project Gutenberg ebook #12242; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Emily Dickinson, A Thunder-Storm, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/a-thunder-storm.html, id L03702.
Form and metre
A Thunder-Storm is 20 lines in 5 verse paragraphs. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 20% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 5 -A-A hold · skyA · house · treeA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The wind begun to rock the grass | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| With threatening tunes and low, -- | 7 | ·/˘˘··· |
| He flung a menace at the earth, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| A menace at the sky. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| The leaves unhooked themselves from trees | 8 | ··˘/˘/·· |
| And started all abroad; | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| The dust did scoop itself like hands | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| And throw away the road. | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| The wagons quickened on the streets, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| The thunder hurried slow; | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| The lightning showed a yellow beak, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And then a livid claw. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The birds put up the bars to nests, | 8 | ········ |
| The cattle fled to barns; | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| There came one drop of giant rain, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And then, as if the hands | 6 | ······ |
| That held the dams had parted hold, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The waters wrecked the sky, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| But overlooked my father's house, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Just quartering a tree. | 6 | ·/˘˘·· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.