The Full Text of “There came a Wind like a Bugle”
1There came a Wind like a Bugle—
2It quivered through the Grass
3And a Green Chill upon the Heat
4So ominous did pass
5We barred the Windows and the Doors
6As from an Emerald Ghost—
7The Doom's Electric Moccasin
8That very instant passed—
9On a strange Mob of panting Trees
10And Fences fled away
11And Rivers where the Houses ran
12Those looked that lived—that Day—
13The Bell within the steeple wild
14The flying tidings told—
15How much can come
16And much can go,
17And yet abide the World!
The Full Text of “There came a Wind like a Bugle”
1There came a Wind like a Bugle—
2It quivered through the Grass
3And a Green Chill upon the Heat
4So ominous did pass
5We barred the Windows and the Doors
6As from an Emerald Ghost—
7The Doom's Electric Moccasin
8That very instant passed—
9On a strange Mob of panting Trees
10And Fences fled away
11And Rivers where the Houses ran
12Those looked that lived—that Day—
13The Bell within the steeple wild
14The flying tidings told—
15How much can come
16And much can go,
17And yet abide the World!
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“There came a Wind like a Bugle” Introduction
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Emily Dickinson's "There came a Wind like a Bugle" marvels at the power of nature and the terror of change. Recalling a day when a huge thunderstorm nearly tore their hometown to shreds, the awestruck speaker wonders that the world can host such uproar without being ripped apart itself. Like most of Dickinson's poems, this one wasn't published until after Dickinson's death; it first appeared in the posthumous collection Poems (1891).
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“There came a Wind like a Bugle” Summary
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The wind began to blow like a trumpet. It made the grass shiver, and the summer heat went suddenly cold beneath an uneasy green light. We hurried to close the windows and doors, as if we were trying to keep a bright green ghost out of the house. The very second we got the house closed up, the rain began to rattle down, making a thrilling, dangerous sound like the end of the world itself. A surreal crowd of trees that seemed to gasp for breath, fences running away from their usual spots, and rivers where houses used to be: that's what people who were alive on the day of this storm saw. Up in the wind-battered church tower, the bell rang wildly as if to give news of the storm. Isn't it amazing how much change and uproar can come and go while leaving the world itself unaltered?
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“There came a Wind like a Bugle” Themes
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Change, Destruction, and Human Insignificance
“There came a Wind like a Bugle” is about a powerful storm tearing through a small town, but the poem does more than illustrate the awe-inspiring power of nature. It also suggests that symbolic stormy upheavals can rip people’s lives to shreds while leaving the broader world itself ultimately unchanged. As the speaker watches a huge thunderstorm destroy their town, they reflect in astonishment that the world somehow “abide[s],” or remains the same, in spite of it all. Through this symbolic storm, the poem suggests that big, stormy changes can feel earth-shattering to the people who endure them, while still meaning little in the grand scheme of things.
Big change, the poem suggests, can sometimes seem as if it’s about to tear the whole world to pieces. The symbolic storm that rolls across the poem’s landscape is terrifyingly vast and powerful: even before it arrives, its eerie green light makes the speaker feel menaced by an “Emerald Ghost.” And when the storm strikes for real, it does all kinds of damage, ripping up trees and fences and sending “Rivers” of floodwater pouring into people’s houses. Read symbolically or literally, these images evoke the kind of disaster that destroys a former way of life.
But all this mayhem, the speaker says, doesn’t actually do any harm to the “World”: big, destructive change might feel like “Doom” itself to the people who endure it, but in the background, the world just rolls on. Even as human things like the “Bell” in the creaking church “steeple” are thrown around at the mercy of the storm, the speaker reflects in amazement that “much can come” and “much can go,” but the “world” itself remains unchanged. This storm, in other words, is vast and life-altering for those who “lived—that Day,” but it makes no permanent difference to the “World” itself.
The poem thus suggests that, in the face of unstoppable, overwhelming forces like time, change, and even literal storms, people’s lives are pretty fragile and small. One town’s destruction is just a blip in the ongoing history of the “World.”
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Nature vs. Humanity
"There came a Wind like a Bugle" tells a tale of nature's awe-inspiring might. As the poem's speaker watches a terrible storm develop from an eerie "Green Chill" to a full-blown disaster, they reflect that nature is overwhelmingly powerful—in ways that might well leave humanity feeling a little unsettled. Nature, the poem suggests, is stronger by far than human beings, no matter what people might try to tell themselves.
From the poem's very beginnings, the speaker knows that they're helpless in the face of a gathering storm. As a "Green Chill" pervades the air and an ominous "Wind" begins to blow like a hunting "Bugle," all the speaker and their family can do to protect themselves is rush indoors and "bar[] the Windows." They feel as if they're being stalked by an "Emerald Ghost," a menacing figure against whom locks and bars can only do so much—or even pursued by "Doom" itself, facing death or the end of the world.
And indeed, the poem continues, the few efforts people can make to save themselves are nothing in the face of this terrifying display of nature's power. The speaker remembers seeing "Rivers where the Houses ran" and "Fences fled away" in rushing stormwaters: in other words, the whole town is swiftly destroyed. Next to these images, the idea that the speaker and their family might save themselves by simply "barr[ing] the Windows and the Doors" looks pitifully naïve. Humanity, the poem suggests, can never keep itself completely safe from nature's merciless might.
Nature, the poem thus concludes, is overwhelmingly powerful—and all of humanity's best efforts to protect themselves against it are no guarantee of safety. In fact, humanity and civilization might just be fleeting, fragile, "pass[ing]" blips in nature's ongoing churn.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “There came a Wind like a Bugle”
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Lines 1-4
There came a Wind like a Bugle—
It quivered through the Grass
And a Green Chill upon the Heat
So ominous did passThe poem begins with a long, eerie note as a "Wind like a Bugle" heralds a coming storm. That simile suggests not just the brassy sound of a first ominous gust of stormwind, but a real threat: a "bugle" is the kind of horn used as a signal in hunting and warfare. Something dangerous is on the way.
In fact, something dangerous already seems to be here. Take a look at the imagery in lines 2-4:
It quivered through the Grass
And a Green Chill upon the Heat
So ominous did passIn these images, the approaching storm already feels like a tangible presence:
- The wind doesn't just make the grass quiver, the speaker says: the wind itself quivers. It's as if the wind were a snake, a physical being parting the grass as it passes by.
- And the "Green Chill" that falls over the summery "Heat" unites two senses, sight and touch. This moment of synesthesia makes the coming storm seem to fill up the whole atmosphere.
Any reader who has ever experienced a summer storm will be able to feel these images on their skin: that sudden chill, that unearthly green light, that shivery breeze. In the speaker's words, it's all awfully "ominous." When these signs come along, there's no escaping a thunderstorm. All that people can do is try to find cover before that storm breaks.
And the poem's form suggests there might be very little time indeed to get out of the storm's way. Written as one long stanza, the poem evokes the unrelenting speed of a storm: that "Green Chill" and sinister wind slow down for no one.
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Lines 5-6
We barred the Windows and the Doors
As from an Emerald Ghost— -
Lines 7-8
The Doom's Electric Moccasin
That very instant passed— -
Lines 9-12
On a strange Mob of panting Trees
And Fences fled away
And Rivers where the Houses ran
Those looked that lived—that Day— -
Lines 13-14
The Bell within the steeple wild
The flying tidings told— -
Lines 15-17
How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the World!
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“There came a Wind like a Bugle” Symbols
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The Storm
The poem's storm can be read as a symbol of change.
When a huge storm rattles through the speaker's town, it throws the landscape into chaos, knocking over fences, flooding houses, and threatening to uproot trees. But it can't have any real effect on the "World" itself. In this, it sounds a lot like the forces of change: any number of things can "come" and "go," the speaker reflects, but the world itself just goes on.
Stormy change, then, is a mighty force, but not an all-powerful one.
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“There came a Wind like a Bugle” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
The poem's imagery puts readers right in the middle of the eerie moments just before a huge storm breaks.
Especially striking here is Dickinson's use of synesthesia to evoke the ominous light and sudden clammy cold of an approaching storm. The "Green Chill upon the Heat" makes the cold air and the weird light seem like one inseparable, inescapable thing. By combining the senses of touch and sight, the poem suggests just how oppressive the storm feels as it creeps up on the countryside.
A similar blurring of boundaries turns up when the speaker describes how the wind "quivered through the grass." Here, of course, readers will imagine the grass quivering (or trembling) in an uneasy breeze. But by attributing that "quiver" to the wind itself, the poem again suggests that the storm feels like a presence before it even breaks.
The uncanny, chilly light of line 3 turns up again in the metaphorical form of an "Emerald Ghost." Now, the cold greenness seems not just huge, but sinister: a bejeweled specter haunting the people in the house. (Readers might note, too, that it doesn't do much good to "bar[] the Windows and the Doors" if you want to keep a ghost out: this moment also suggests how powerless the people really are against the storm!)
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Juxtaposition
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Assonance
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Alliteration
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Pun
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"There came a Wind like a Bugle" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Bugle
- Quivered
- Ominous
- Barred
- Doom's Electric Moccasin
- Steeple
- Tidings
- Abide
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A trumpet, especially the kind used as a signal in hunting or warfare.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “There came a Wind like a Bugle”
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Form
"There came a Wind like a Bugle" is written in one continuous stanza of 17 lines, like a gust of stormwinds. But readers will note that the ballad-like rhyme scheme and meter of this one big stanza also seems to divide the poem up into Dickinson's most common form, four-line quatrains—at least, until an odd five-line passage at the end.
On a closer look, though, that five-line passage preserves the rhythm and rhyme of the four-line passages: it just divides what would usually be one line into two. That choice gives these last few times a musing, wondering tone; it's as if the speaker is slowing down to roll their experience of the storm around in their head. It also visually separates the speaker's philosophizing about the storm from their description of the storm's eerie wildness.
The poem thus evokes the storm itself by running what could have been several stanzas together into one wild blast—but also suggests that the speaker is safely distant from the storm now, calling it up in memory.
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Meter
"There came a Wind like a Bugle" uses one of Dickinson's favorite meters: common meter, also known as ballad meter. This steady, swinging rhythm is built from alternating lines of iambic tetrameter—that is, lines of four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm—and iambic trimeter, lines of three iambs. Here's an example from lines 5 and 6:
We barred | the Win- | dows and | the Doors
As from | an Em- | erald Ghost—The musical, chanting quality of this meter helps to evoke the speaker's fascination with the storm battering the world outside. But little variations in the pattern also suggest the jumpy anxiety before the storm hits. Listen to the difference in the very first line:
There came | a Wind | like a Bugle—
There are only three feet here, not four—and the last one isn't an iamb, but an anapest, with a da-da-DUM rhythm. What's more, it has a feminine ending, an extra unstressed syllable at the end of the line. This short, odd line helps to create tension right from the get-go: the poem will only get into the swing of its common meter in line 5.
And check out what happens in the poem's last three lines:
How much | can come
And much | can go,
And yet | abide | the World!Here, Dickinson divides the four iambic feet of a tetrameter line into two lines of two feet apiece (also known as dimeter). That means when the poem is read aloud, its rhythm sounds steady—but on the page, these last lines stand out, drawing extra attention to the speaker's reflections on the nature of the world.
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Rhyme Scheme
"There came a Wind like a Bugle" uses this classic ballad rhyme scheme:
ABCB
This traditional pattern gives the poem the deceptively simple flavor of a folk song or a hymn. Putting complex ideas into a down-to-earth form like this was one of Dickinson's favorite poetic tricks.
Note, though, that a number of the rhymes here are slant, like "Ghost" and "passed" in lines 6 and 8 or "told" and "World" in lines 14 and 17. That slight off-kilter quality helps to make the poem's rhymes feel as uneasy as the eerie green light before the storm.
Readers might also notice that the end of the poem appears to break from the scheme: the first 12 lines break into neat four-line groups, but the five lines left over, obviously, do not! But read aloud, the poem's rhyme scheme remains unchanged: lines 15 and 16 are actually one longer line divided in two, so the ABCB pattern remains consistent. (See Meter for more on that.)
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“There came a Wind like a Bugle” Speaker
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The reader doesn't learn much about the speaker of this poem, who reveals nothing of their own identity. All the reader can gather about this person comes from their description of a storm. As the speaker looks out on the coming tempest, they see it as everything from a creepy "Emerald Ghost" (in the early stages before the clouds break) to the "Electric" rattle of "Doom" itself (as the rain finally starts to fall). This speaker is clearly alert, inquisitive, thoughtful, and imaginative, able to spin a cloudburst into philosophical reflections on the nature of the whole "World."
Many of Dickinson's poems use a similar voice, unidentifiable but intense; the reader might well speculate that some of these speaker's qualities are Dickinson's own.
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“There came a Wind like a Bugle” Setting
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The landscape the poem describes sounds a lot like Dickinson's own home in Amherst, Massachusetts. The uprooted "Fences," "panting Trees," and the church "steeple" with its windblown bell evoke a classic American rural scene—and the feeling of an ominous chill breaking a humid heat will be familiar to anyone who's visited the eastern United States in summertime.
But really, this poem could take place just about anywhere a storm hits. This mighty storm, with its power to reshape the landscape, is a big, impersonal natural force: it doesn't matter to the storm what particular bit of land it upheaves.
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Literary and Historical Context of “There came a Wind like a Bugle”
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Literary Context
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) became one of the greatest and most influential of writers without publishing more than a handful of poems during her lifetime. After 1865, she rarely even left her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. But her intense, philosophical poetry ranged far beyond the borders of that small world.
Dickinson's distinctive poetic voice combines down-to-earth forms (like her famous ballad stanzas) with startling, evocative word choices and profound insights into time, nature, and love. One of her favorite techniques, the use of an expectant em-dash to end lines, is on vivid display in "There came a Wind like a Bugle."
This poem, like almost all of Dickinson's work, didn't see the light of day until after her death; Dickinson mostly eschewed publication, mistrusting its conformity and commercialism. But she was actively involved in the literary world around her: she admired Charlotte Brontë and William Wordsworth, met Ralph Waldo Emerson, and shared a general American Transcendentalist interest in the workings of the imagination and the power of nature.
Dickinson only became widely known posthumously, when her sister Lavinia discovered a cache of nearly 1,800 secret poems and brought them to publication with the help of a (sometimes combative) group of Dickinson's family and friends. It was a fortunate rescue: Dickinson's poetry would become some of the most influential and beloved in the world.
Historical Context
Dickinson wrote most of her poetry during the American Civil war, which ran from 1861 to 1865. She was firmly on the Union side of that bloody conflict; in one of her letters, she writes with delight about the ignominious defeat of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who was reportedly trying to make his escape disguised in a woman's skirt when he was finally captured.
However, Dickinson rarely addressed the political world around her directly in her poetry, preferring either to write about her immediate surroundings or to take a much wider philosophical perspective.
"There came a Wind like a Bugle," however, is one of many of Dickinson's poems that might indirectly reflect her thoughts and feelings about the chaos around her, even if it doesn't explicitly deal with the war. The poem's portrait of a landscape torn to shreds by a violent storm might evoke the bewildering terror of civil war threatening to turn a familiar home into a devastated waste. Even the "bugle" in the first line sounds rather military.
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More “There came a Wind like a Bugle” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem as a Song — Listen to a musical version of the poem composed by Aaron Copland and performed by Leontyne Price.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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The Emily Dickinson Museum — Visit the website of the Emily Dickinson Museum to learn more about Dickinson's life and work.
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Dickinson's Influence — Read contemporary author Helen Oyeyemi's celebration of Dickinson.
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The Poem in Dickinson's Hand — See one of Dickinson's original drafts of the poem at the Emily Dickinson Archive.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Dickinson
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