A Thunderstorm
by Emily Dickinson

American poet. Began writing poetry, according to her own declaration, in the winter of 1861-62. All but a handful of her poems were unpublished in her lifetime. She left over a thousand manuscripts which were gradually collected and published by her sister Lavinia. The three volumes brought out between 1891 and 1896 revealed poems of a deeply personal and spiritual nature and showed startling originality. After this, further collections of her work emerged, as The Single Hound (1914), and Bolts of Melody (1945). Her letters and selected commentaries on her life and work were edited by Thomas H.Johnson and published in 1958.

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A Thunderstorm
by Emily Dickinson

The wind begun to rock the grass
With threatening tunes and low, -
He flung a menace at the earth,
A menace at the sky.

The leaves unhooked themselves from trees
And started all abroad;
The dust did scoop itself like hands
And 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.

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A Thunderstorm by Emily Dickinson