MISGIVINGS (1860)

When ocean clouds over inland hills

   Sweep storming in late autumn brown,

And horror the sodden valley fills,

   And the spire falls crashing in the town,

I muse upon my country's ills---

The tempest bursting from the waste of Time

On world's fairest hop linked with man's foulest crime.



Nature's dark side is heeded now---

   (Ah!  Optimist-cheer disheartened flown)---

A child may read the moody brow

   Of yon black mountain lone.

With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,

And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:

The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.



Herman Melville (1860)