When ocean-clouds over inland hillsSweep 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 TimeOn 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 browOf 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.