The Wind begun to rock the Grass

"A Thunderstorm" is a poem written by Emily Dickinson. This poem has been released under
both the title "A Thunderstorm" and the title "The Wind begun to rock the Grass" throughout the
years. It is about the damage that nature can have on nature and how it should seek shelter before
the storm. Of course, it can also be a metaphor for life in general.

This poem is written as five stanzas with four lines in each. Dickinson rhymes the second and
fourth lines using an imperfect rhyme scheme. Even though there is not a set meter struction in
terms of line length, each line seems to be written in some form of iambic meter. As well, the
even lines are shorter than the odd lines.

First a strong wind begins to blow rocking the grass. Dark clouds gather in the sky
casting threatening shadows on the earth and in the sky.
The strong wind severs leaves attached to the trees, and they are blown here and
there; similarly, dust and sand are also blown into the air and get scattered on roads
and almost everywhere.
The wagons and vehicles on the road also feel the impact of the thunderstorm;
though their speed is lessened, but they are buffeted by the strong wind. Then the
lightning flashes in the sky showing its yellow beak and blue claws.
Birds take shelter in their nests; animals hide themselves in barns. Then the rain
begins. First of all a big drop falls, followed by torrent. It appears as if the hands that
were holding a dam had let the water flow. The dam appeared to be in the backdrop
of her father’s house that had a tree in its lawn.   
Right from that arresting opening line – and few poets have dealt such a strong line in opening
lines than Emily Dickinson – she is out to unsettle us: ‘The Wind begun to rock the
Grass’, not  ‘The Wind began’. The attempts to wrongfoot us, to put us at our unease, continue
with the unusual word-order of the second line: ‘With threatening Tunes and low’. Not ‘With
low and threatening Tunes’.

‘He threw a Menace at the Earth – / A Menace at the Sky.’ ‘He’ is presumably God here, but
because of the placing of ‘He’ at the head of the line, we have no way of telling whether it would
otherwise be capitalised (to show divinity: ‘He’ for God). The rebounding of this ‘Menace’, like
a thunderbolt or a bolt of lightning rebounding from the earth and back up into the sky, is
mirrored nicely by the quatrain, with the trademark Dickinsonian dash even helping to suggest,
boomerang-like, this act of rebounding.

Everything is rendered strange in what follows: the leaves aren’t shaken passively from the trees,
but unhook themselves; the lightning is like a bird of prey with a beak and claw that is ‘livid’ –
not just because of the blue-grey colour of the thunderclouds but to hint at the mighty anger of
the coming storm.
Then, as the poem nears its end, Dickinson returns us to the hands of God:

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 –

The floodgates or ‘Dams’ are opened, and after that single drop of ‘Giant Rain’, the deluge or
downpour arrives, wrecking not only the land but ‘the Sky’, changing the appearance of the dark
clouds. And God is the focus of the final couplet of ‘The Wind begun to rock the Grass’, too,
‘my Father’s House’ being the local church. Throughout the poem, Dickinson emphasises the
power of this natural phenomenon, linking it to godly power.