Life & Wisdom Quote by Jonathan Swift

Swift turns marriage into a piece of meteorology: a vow delivered "under this window in stormy weather", licensed less by church or state than by whatever force is currently throwing lightning at the roof. The joke lands because it borrows the elevated cadence of the Anglican marriage rite ("let none... put asunder") and swaps solemn sanctity for theatrical threat. In Swift's hands, the sacrament becomes a kind of dare to the cosmos, as if wedlock is credible only when it can survive a literal stress test.

The subtext is acid. "Him who rules the thunder" reads like pious deference, but it also feels like a sideways smirk at the human tendency to outsource commitment to grand, external authority. If God is the only one allowed to break this bond, Swift is also implying that plenty of smaller, very human forces already will: money, boredom, class resentment, sexual politics. By staging the union amid storm, he makes visible what polite society prefers to hide: marriage isn't simply romance formalized; it's a contract people enter while the weather is already turning.

Context matters because Swift lived in a world where marriage was inseparable from property and reputation, and where clerical language could dignify arrangements that were, practically speaking, negotiations. The line works as satire because it mimics official rhetoric so cleanly you can hear the institutional voice - then feel it slip on a puddle. The thunder isn't just God's; it's the roar of public scrutiny, the noisy, coercive pressure that keeps couples "together" long after tenderness has left the room.