When ocean-clouds over inland hills <br />Sweep storming in late autumn brown, <br />And horror the sodden valley fills, <br />And the spire falls crashing in the town, <br />I muse upon my country's ills-- <br />The tempest burning from the waste of Time <br />On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime. <br /> <br />Nature's dark side is heeded now-- <br />(Ah! optimist-cheer dishartened flown)-- <br />A child may read the moody brow <br />Of yon black mountain lone. <br />With shouts the torrents down the gorges go, <br />And storms are formed behind the storms we feel: <br />The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.<br /><br />Herman Melville<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/misgivings/
