'Split asunder'

— Photo by Bidgee

Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter...
Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap,—
You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat....
Look! look! that livid flash!
And instantly follows the rattling thunder,
As if some cloud-crag, split asunder,
Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash,
On the Earth, which crouches in silence under;
And now a solid gray wall of rain
Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile...

— "Summer Storm," by James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), Massachusetts-based poet and diplomat