Herman Melville

Misgivings



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 burning from the waste of Time

On the world’s fairest hope linked with man’s foulest crime.



Nature’s dark side is heeded now–

(Ah! optimist-cheer dishartened 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 storms we feel:

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