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 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.