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An anthem, ‘like the sound of many waters !’
The prophet heard it, as in wondrous vision
He lay entranced upon the cliffs of PATMOS ;
And wouldst thou hear its emblem, go and listen,
In deep and dread delight, to NIÀGARA !
That everlasting anthem which hath peal’d
Nor paus’d a moment, from the birth of ages !
And, fitting emblem of celestial chorus,
The loud eternity of rushing music
Disturbs not, but subdues and fills, the spirit
With feelings of unutterable stillness,
And infinite tranquillity, excluding
The world with all its dissonance of passions.
‡‡There, too, a cloud of ever-offer’d incense
From nature’s altar,— in the vapoury column
On which bright rainbows beam the smiles of mercy, —
Hath risen well-nigh six thousand years to heaven,
In unison with that astounding chorus
Of multitudinous and white-robed waters,
So glorious in the fury of their rapture
Around their awful and mysterious centre !
‡‡And oft, stupendous Cataract, as winter
Comes listening to thy choral hallelujahs,
And gazing on thy pomp of rising incense;
With mimic semblance of some mighty temple
He loves to grace thee, and thy shaggy borders
Fantastically silvers o’er with frost-work;
Pranking with icy pinnacles and pillars
The walls of thy magnificent Catherdral :
But ne’er Cathedral owned a crypt so dreadful
As thine, o’er-arch’d with such a thundering deluge.
‡‡And still the thunder of the eternal anthem,
And still the column of ascending incense,
Shall draw remotest pilgrims to they worship,
Shall hold them breathless in thy sovereign presence,
And lost to all that they before had look’d on;
Yea, conjur’d up by strong imagination,
Shall sound in ears that never heard the music,
Shall gleam in eyes that ne’er beheld the vision;
Till the great globe, with all that it inherits,
Shall vanish, — like that cloud of ceaseless incense, —
In thunder, — like that falling world of waters.
‡‡Oh peerless paragon of earthly wonders !
Embodying, in their most intense expression,
Beauty, sublimity, might, music, motion,
To fix and fill at once eye, ear, thought, feeling;
And kindling, into unknown exaltation,
Dread and delight, astonishment and rapture !
Sure GOD said, let there be a NIÀGARA !
And, lo, a NIÀGARA heard His bidding;
And glimmer’d forth a sparkle of His glory,
And whisper’d here the thunder of Omnipotence !
Clifton, April 1839
Source: Barham, William. Descriptions of Niagara; selected From Various Travellers. Gravesend: William Barham, [1847], p176-177
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