Misgivings
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 bursting 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 storm we feel:The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.
Words in this poem
- storming a.
- from Storm, v. Storming party (Mil.), a party assigned to the duty of making the first assault in storming a fortress.
- crashing n.
- The noise of many things falling and breaking at once.
- flown a.
- Flushed, inflated.
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
- rafter n.
- Originally, any rough and somewhat heavy piece of timber. Now, commonly, one of the timbers of a roof which are put on sloping, according to the inclination of the roof. See Illust. of Queen-post. [AS. ræfter; akin to E. raft, n. See Raft.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Misgivings is in the public domain. This text is taken from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, Project Gutenberg ebook #12384; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Herman Melville, Misgivings, in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12384, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/melville-battle-pieces/misgivings.html, id L19086.
Form and metre
Misgivings is 14 lines in 2 stanzas of 7 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABACC hillsA · brownB · fillsA · townB · illsA · timeC · crimeC
- 2 ABAB-CC nowA · flownB · browA · loneB · go · feelC · keelC
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When ocean-clouds over inland hills | 8 | ·/···/·· |
| Sweep storming in late autumn brown, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And horror the sodden valley fills, | 9 | ·/˘·/˘/˘· |
| And the spire falls crashing in the town, | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| I muse upon my country’s ills-- | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The tempest bursting from the waste of Time | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| On the world’s fairest hope linked with man’s foulest crime. | 12 | ···/˘····/˘· |
| Nature’s dark side is heeded now-- | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| (Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)-- | 8 | ·/˘·˘/˘· |
| A child may read the moody brow | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Of yon black mountain lone. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| With shouts the torrents down the gorges go, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And storms are formed behind the storm we feel: | 10 | ·········· |
| The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel. | 15 | ·/····/˘····/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.