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.
From: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/misgivings/?_r=0
Date: 1860
By: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
From Troubles of The World 