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.