The clouds their backs together laid,
Emily Dickinson
The north began to push,
The forests galloped till they fell,
The lightning skipped like mice;
The thunder crumbled like a stuff–
How good to be safe in tombs,
Where nature’s temper cannot reach
Nor vengeance ever comes!
Everything about this poem is odd.
The nature images are striking in their action: the forests gallop, the lightning skips, the thunder crumbles. The only safe place here is a tomb, which means that safety can only be found while dead. But speaker tells us this is good: there’s no vengeance to be found in a tomb.
The rhyme, too, is interesting, because it’s off kilter: there’s really no rhyme scheme here to speak of, unless we do some real reaching for slant rhymes. I’ll give you that tombs/comes was probably an intended rhyme, but push/mice? There are rhymes and repetitive sounds within the lines, though; consider till/fell, the long i of lightning/like/mice, the u of thunder/crumbled/stuff, good/tombs.
It’s unbalanced, too: in an 8-line poem, we have 5 lines about how terribly dangerous a storm can be, and 3 about the wonderful safety of being dead.
The Emily Project 