A thunderstorm is usually written about as spectacle or threat. In this untitled poem, whose title is just a row of asterisks, it becomes something more ordinary and more recognisable: a family argument that has gone on too long. Day, Night, Lightning, Thunder and Rain all become characters. The poem's real interest is less the weather than the different ways of behaving once a quarrel has started.
The first stanza supplies the offence. Lightning "flashes through the dark, / Mimicking brother Day", an accurate observation, since a flash really does turn night briefly into daylight, recast as cheek. "Sweet sister Night" is angered and "calls upon the Thunder's might / To frighten her away." Look at what has happened to nature here. In a real storm thunder is simply the sound of the lightning. In the poem it is a bodyguard, summoned in revenge. That small reversal turns physics into plot, and it is the poem's best move, because it gives the storm motives.
The second stanza gives the argument its rhythm. Lightning "flees for but a time, / for she's a flighty thing", and "flighty" works twice, meaning both scatterbrained and quick to take flight. Once she "forgets her fear", she returns, and "again does thunder ring." The repeated "again" imitates the stop-start pattern of a real storm: flash, boom, hush, flash. The sounds join in. The f's of *flees*, *flighty*, *forgets* and *fear*, and earlier of *flashes* and *frighten*, flicker through the lines much as the lightning does.
Then the poem changes its verbs. Lightning flashes, flees and appears, Night calls, and thunder rings. Rain "keeps on", has "seen their fights already" and "must keep peace". She does very little except last. "She's seen their fights already" gives her the weariness of an older sibling or parent who knows how this scene ends, and "must" hints that peacekeeping is a duty rather than a pleasure. She is also not above the row but "inside / The bickering, fighting weather pride", which is exactly where rain falls in a storm. "Pride" is nicely double, suggesting a group, as with lions, and also the stubborn vanity that keeps a fight going. The poem ends on "calm and steady", and she is the only figure who never changes her behaviour.
The form is neat without being stiff. Each of the three stanzas has five lines and the same rhyme pattern: a free opening line (*dark*, *time*, *all*), then rhymes that wrap around a central pair. *Day* and *away* enclose *Night* and *might*, *thing* and *ring* enclose *fear* and *appear*, and *already* and *steady* enclose *inside* and *pride*. The unrhymed openers feel like the unpredictable first flash before the pattern clicks into place. Lines are short, three or four beats, often opening in a falling, trochaic rhythm ("LIGHT-ning FLASH-es THROUGH the DARK") and settling into an iambic one ("To FRIGHT-en HER a-WAY"). Some lines are bumpy, such as "So angering sweet sister Night", and the pronouns ask for attention, because "she" is Night, then Lightning, then Rain. That can blur, but it also suits a crowd of squabbling sisters.
Personifying weather is an old habit in poetry, so the poem's significance lies less in its method than in whom it chooses to admire. The noisy characters get the action, and the quiet one gets the last word. The poem suggests that in a quarrel steadiness outlasts noise, a surprisingly grown-up lesson to find in a fifteen-line poem about a thunderstorm.