The poet captures Mrs Reece’s extraordinary laughter by describing how she laughs with every part of her body. He compares her body, her sounds and her movements to huge forces of nature.

He begins with her smile as the laughter spreads, ‘dimple by dimple’, and then describes how the ‘circles of her eyes/Close into slits’. He gives the impression that her body is vast like ‘a great elm’. Her laughter is compared to an earthquake as ‘subterranean chuckles rise’ and ‘volcanic forces’ burst from ‘hidden sources’.  

He also uses powerful metaphors, comparing her to ‘one wild crow’ while describing her face as ‘scarlet ridge and furrow’.

Her ‘hanging head’, ‘feeble hand’ and ‘streaming face’ imply that she is exhausted by her laughter and needs to recover from it. These details capture the extraordinary nature of Mrs Reece’s laughter.