by Thomas Cole, 1830
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Softly the light in these umbrageous realms
Falls on the path, and plays upon the leaf —
Softly the breeze now whispering steals between
The thousand pillars of the quiet wood —
And we with gentle musings, and fond thoughts
Untroubled, free, pursue our pleasant way —
What sound is that careering on the wings
Of stormy blasts, so mightily and fills
The lofty arches of the forest wide ?
Is it the clamor of impetuous winds
That strive for egress from some rock-bound cave ?
Or is an earthquake waking from its wrath
And from the high unstable mountain tops
Hurling the ponderous and rebounding rocks ?
No! tis Niagara shouts from the abyss
Where headlong he has cast him in his might !
And rocks, and woods, and the astounded air,
And earth’s deep center tremble as with fear —
Approach and view the wonder of a world
See ! when the waters of a hundred lakes
An unheaped multitude tumultuous leap
O’er the projecting crags, into the gulf —
Thence the thick mist perpetual ascends,
In cloudy piles into the sky and hides,
The quivering torment of the floods below —
Like steam emitted from some cauldron vast
Vexed by furious and unquenching fires —
Thou consummation of the earth’s sublime !
Thy course nor time, nor tide, nor change hath stemmed !
Thy voice hath risen above the tempest’s roar
Year after year till countless they are grown —
Seasons have looked upon thee and have died —
Ages have vanish’d and the earth grown old —
Man who hath moved mountains, bound the sea,
Awe-struck recoils and works on thee no change
The earth hath much of beauty but the choice
Is garlanded around thine august brows —
Yon, flaky foam is white as alpine snow —
Yon gushing emerald clear as ocean’s depths —
The bow of promise sits on sable clouds ;
But lo ! a far excelling iris girds
The dazzling splendour of thy snowy breast—
Ages untold thy voice broke forth unheard ;
But by the shrinking wolf, or the tim’rous deer
Or wandering savage of the echoing wild —
Until an enterprise sublime unbarred
The mighty portals of the golden west
And midst its teeming fulness thou wast found
Majestic in the wilderness enthroned —
Written at the Falls May, 1829
Thomas Cole visited Niagara for the first time just before his departure to England in June 1829.
Source: Thomas Cole. Thomas Cole’s Poetry. comp. & ed. by Marshall B. Tymn. York, PA : Liberty Cap Books, 1972.
Read about the painting Distant View Of Niagara Falls