[1] The poem was originally published in The Empire on 15 July 1856 and subsequently reprinted in the author's major collections as well as other poetry anthologies.

"[2] Michael Ackland, writing about the sublimity of the poem, noted that its "concern with the interplay of natural, mental and supernatural elements is raised in purely physical terms through the employment of surrogate figures to express man's imminent peril.

Nature provides the raw materials of elemental force and victim, but it is cognitive intelligence which discerns in events the sublime of terror, and their relevance to our social and spiritual preoccupations."

In his works, landscape becomes instinct with spiritual purpose, and ordinary, honest folk the heroes of elemental encounters projected on an epic scale.

"[3] After the poem's initial publication in The Empire[1] it was reprinted as follows: "This is only partially an after-thought — or only an after-thought in the ripeness of its expression, it being founded on the circumstance, that the author, young as he was, and from the very coming on of the storm, became possessed with the feeling that it was for him eventually to make a poem of it, and was thereby led to observe its startling and dangerous manifestations throughout, with a singularly daring attention.