⁠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.