Misgivings Poem by Herman Melville

Misgivings

Rating: 2.8


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.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Chukwuebuka Adebayo 01 August 2016

i muse when i see many literal works but everyone is to lazy and not ready to read(learn) a line.

2 0 Reply
Amar Agarwala 01 August 2016

Thank you for a soul searching poem.

0 2 Reply
Susan Williams 01 August 2016

Caught in the middle of dire change- the dark clouds of civil war approaching to pit brother against brother. He certainly caught the brutality and fearsomeness of the changing time

5 0 Reply
Edward Kofi Louis 01 August 2016

My country's ills! ! Thanks for sharing this poem with us.

0 2 Reply
Stephen W 01 August 2016

Apparently this was written just as the Civil War was about to break out.

1 0 Reply
Gangadharan Nair Pulingat 01 August 2016

Storms are formed behind the storms we feel...... Man's foulest crimes may end sometime for human goodness we can wish. A great poem.

0 1 Reply
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Herman Melville

Herman Melville

New York City, New York
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