"The Coming Storm"

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Title:     "The Coming Storm"
Author: Herman Melville [More Titles by Melville]

A Picture by S.R. Gifford, and owned by E.B.
Included in the N.A. Exhibition, April, 1865.

All feeling hearts must feel for him
Who felt this picture. Presage dim--
Dim inklings from the shadowy sphere
Fixed him and fascinated here.

A demon-cloud like the mountain one
Burst on a spirit as mild
As this urned lake, the home of shades.
But Shakspeare's pensive child

Never the lines had lightly scanned,
Steeped in fable, steeped in fate;
The Hamlet in his heart was 'ware,
Such hearts can antedate.

No utter surprise can come to him
Who reaches Shakspeare's core;
That which we seek and shun is there--
Man's final lore.

[The end]
Herman Melville's poem: "The Coming Storm"

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