Niagara

Now sailed the cloudless moon through seas of light
And dimmed the sleepless stars that watch the night,
As swiftly turning from the sandy lane
The riders crossed a spacious rolling plain,
Hedged by the lofty screen of dusky woods
That hide Niagara's deep-embedded floods.
White clouds of mist rolled upward on the breeze,
Swept o'er the brink, and dripped among the trees ;
While earth and air, in tremor all around,
Shook in dread cadence to the rumbling sound
That rises up from Nature's troubled womb,
With war unbroken till the day of doom.
They hurried on ; the woody veil withdrew,
The wondrous vision swept full into view ;
Niagara's twin-born cataracts descend,
And eye and ear with their contention rend.
A spot of chaos, from Creation's day
Left unsubdued, to show the world alway
What was the earth ere God's commandment ran
That light should be, and order first began.

The riders halt, and for a moment stay,
While Ranger John half chid the brief delay.

Though often seen before, with fresh desire
The glorious vision still they each admire.
Spread o'er the south, a furious tumbling sea
Rolls down the steep incline, as wild and free
As when with tossing heads and flowing manes
The desert steeds in herds sweep o'er the plains,
As in th' Olympic Stadium's final round
The chariot wheels revolve with thundering sound,
While veiled in clouds of dust the champions fly,
And shouts and turmoil shake the earth and sky !

Thus down the rocky rapids, side by side,
A thousand foaming currents madly ride ;
Now mingling, now dividing, each and all
Still swifter hurry to the final goal.

There, waves that washed Superior's rocky strand,
And rolled transparent o'er her silver sand,
So pure and limpid, that they seemed to bear
The bark canoe afloat in very air,
Now, lashed to madness, o'er the rapids ran,
Yoked to the darker waves of Michigan ;
St Glair's shoal streams, and Huron's haunted floods
That tumbled round the Manitoulin woods,
And fretful Erie's waters, in dismay
Sweep white with terror down the shelvy way.

In vain, Goat Island, dank, and grim with scars
Of an eternity of watery wars,
With stony shoulder stems the rushing tides
That right and left his dripping shore divides.
They 'scape his grasp, and o'er the jutting brink
Sheer down on either hand impetuous sink \
The vail of waters rending, as they go
'Mid storms of mist into the gulf below,
Where, face to face, the sundered torrents pour
In rival cataracts, with deafening roar,
Mingle their sprays, and with their mighty war
Shake earth's deep centre with eternal jar.

That dread abyss ! What mortal tongue may tell
The seething horrors of its watery hell !
Where, pent in craggy walls that gird the deep,
Imprisoned tempests howl, and madly sweep
The tortured floods, drifting from side to side
In furious vortices, that circling ride
Around the deep arena ; or, set free
From depths unfathomed, bursts a boiling sea
In showers of mist and spray, that leap and bound
Against the dripping rocks ; while loud resound
Ten thousand thunders, that as one conspire
To strike the deepest note of Nature's lyre.