December 7, 1860 (Friday)

"But with the exception of Whitman, no poet ever wrote more piercingly about what happened, or what it felt like as it was happening.  And who is to say that Herman Melville had no influence, even watching from the wings?  After the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln remarked, "We are like whalers who have been on a long chase.  We have at last got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer, or with one flop of his tail he will send us all into eternity."  (Misgivings, New York Times Narrative by Ted Widmer, December 7, 2010)

                                               Misgivings by Herman Melville (winter of 1860)

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 you 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.