painted by B. Hess, 1868
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
God of the mountain-height and rolling flood !
What majesty, and might and grandeur soar
In one unceasing hymn of praise to Thee
From out the turmoil of Niagara’s surge.
Roll on, proud terrorist ! with sweep sublime,
Whose merest touch is as the lusty throes
Of a whole race of Anaks starting from
A trance of passion gathering while it slept.
The massive oak that wrestles with the blasts
For centuries, is but a fragile whisp,
A giant’s toy, in thy relentless grasp ;
And man, whose pride would overawe the world,
Is but a paltry bubble in thy hand,
That passes into nothingness and death.
The crash and wrack of worlds, the sway supreme
Of nation over nation, and the rise
And fall of mighty empires, are as nought
Compared with thee, who’st seen the ages pass,
As in a mirror ; thou the Merlin dread
That beckons them to their eternal rest,
And lulls them into silence with a psalm.
The centuries lie buried at thy feet,
And all their shrouded hosts rise up to pay
The great magician homage. Thy dread voice
Is as the thunder amid Alpine hills,
And the sun-flash upon thine angry brow
The awful lightning of thy wrath, that like
The fine Damascus blade lets out the life,
Or ere the spirit mounts the Elysian fields.
The children of to-day will have grown old ;
Their children’s children from the ample scroll
And record where the generations trace
Their mortal autographs, shall pass away
And be forgotten ; but thy trumpet tones,
Wild, deep, sonorous, then as now, shall make
The heart of man a solemn fane of praise.
Æolus’ slaves, the rude compliant winds,
May lash the sea to fury ; billows roll,
And mountain-wave on mountain-wave be piled ;
When, lo ! the spirit of the storm bows down
Beneath the fetters of the angel, Calm :
But thy tremendous bass confronts the skies
With jubilee of passion evermore,
Unchanged, unchangeable, making thy song
The type of the eternal, without end.
Source: Niagara by Charles Sangster was first published in the British American Magazine (Toronto), 1 (1863): 234–35
Also published in Charles Sangster, ed. by Frank M. Tierney. Norland Echoes and Other Strains and Lyrics. Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1976
Read about Charles Sangster in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography