Far–stretching in the morning beams,
And blazing in the golden gleams,
The mingling of a thousand streams !
And trembling many–hued, among
Thy shifting mists, the rainbow hung.
Before thee, o’er thy gulf is flung.
Over thy wave of tender green
That falls forever down serene,
Then foams into the whitest sheen,
Its gauzy veil the mist–film throws,
Through which the shimmering sunshine glows
Down to thy deep of watery snows.
The avalanche, from mountain–height,
Sweeps, shuddering, in its awful might,
And robed in mantle dim and white,
Slow gathering, in its downward sweep,
Into some gulf’s unfathomed deep,
With wild, and long, and fearful leap,
Down, down, into the abysmal mist
Whose mysteries mortal never wist,
No eye hath seen nor ear may list ;
And silence all the air doth fill
Save of some moorland–bird the trill,
Or trickling of the mountain–rill.
But ever–changing thou dost pour,
Yet still the same, with solemn roar,
O’er thy dim cliff forevermore.
And standing on thy shore, I seem,
As one who in a silent dream,
And launched on some mysterious stream,
Is borne, from whence he knows not, hither ,
And with vast sweep is hurried thither,
He knows not why, he knows not whither ;
While through my brain, in sounding rhyme,
All thoughts eternal and sublime,
Course slow, the universe, and time,
And endless change that ceaselessly
Hymns of eternity through thee,
And I enter into Infinity.
Published 25th June, 1859
Source: Howard Worcester Gilbert. Aldornere, and Two Other Pennsylvanian Idylls Together With Minor Poems. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Franklin Printing Co., 1890
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I liked this poem. Classical in style. Excellent description of the Falls and their emotional impact on the observer.