Analysis

The poem sets a stormy scene, with the word ‘wild’ repeated at the start to show how violently wild the storm is. The sea is high and the gale has a steady ‘roar’ with use of onomatopoeia emphasising the sounds of the wind blowing fiercely.

There is a sense of personification with the ‘undertone muttering’ with ‘incessant’ showing that this noise continues all the time and is irritating. This develops into ‘demoniac laughter’, which links the devil to the storm, making it seem evil and threatening. These sounds are described as ‘piercing’, which shows how violent and unpleasant they are.

There is a religious metaphor on line 4 ‘waves’ air, midnight, their savage trinity’ the trinity is ‘father, son and holy spirit’ in the church, here it is the combination of all factors that cause the hellish stormy scene, as if it has been crated by a force, like God or the devil.

The storm is continually built up to be a ferocious force with words like ‘lashing’ ‘careering’ ‘fierce slanting’ all showing the power of the force of the rain and wind on everything around it. The sounds created by alliteration ‘beachy slush and sand spirits’ with the ‘s’ sound creating the hiss of the sea spray as it hits the land.

The wind is described as a ‘death wind’ on line 7, which emphasises its power and destructiveness. The ‘swirl and spray’ is described as ‘cutting’ to emphasise the violent nature of it and its’ destructive qualities.

There is the voices of those in the storm on line 9, watching out for a shipwreck in the distance. There wind carries on its deadly ‘tireless’ crashing and destructiveness’ with lines 10 to 14 repeating a lot of the material given earlier in the poem, emphasising the power and continuing nature of the storm. There is continuing use of onomatopoeia and alliteration to add further emphasis to the destructive nature of the storm and the loud sounds it creates.

The poem has the sonnet structure of 14 lines, but it does not follow the 10 syllables per line form, showing the wildness and unpredictability of the storm.