Explore "Misgivings. (1860.)" by Herman Melville on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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 the world's fairest hope 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.