A Cataract

In a cavern of a solitary mountain
Are thy waters born,
Wherein, before the flashing of thy silver fountain
From the twilight like another mom,
We may hear an inward murmur from the glooming.
We may feel a breathing chill !
Impelled of a blind longing for a sunny air illuming,
With a bubbling and a sliding still,
Glide thine infant river-waters ever flowing,
While the willow leaves and flowers
Fill thy heart of innocent crystal with a glory glowing
From their undulating airy bowers !
There the children love to play about thy brightness
With a joy like thine.
With a guileless aimless unforeboding lightness.
And many a limpid laugh like thine.
With a beautiful bewilderment thy childhood,
Roaming in the forest,
Blends with another water of the wildwood ;
Till strong in youth mature thou pourest,
Where all the granite gorge resounding
Thunders and lightens evermore,
Reels with the terrible splendour of thy bounding.
And the plunge of wild white waters, and the roar.

Immortal plunge ! terrifically daring,
Illumining the gloom with glory ;
Pines are holding wrung with frenzy, while impetuous winds are bearing
All abroad the rumour and tumult of thy story !
Lo ! the scare of mists that hurry from hell's cauldron recoiling !
Fall of a lucid ocean, all a flashing foam !
Lo! maidenhair and mosses midway above the boiling,
Wooing watery sunshine, love turmoil for a home.

In what primeval cataclysm
Thy glory erst was hurled into the abysm
Who may disclose ? but in a former time
So marvelled men before thy might sublime ;
So ghostly breathed thy shadowy cavernfountain
From far within the solitary mountain.
So fresh and healing all thy wave,
A minister of life wherever it may lave ;
That on the height above the cave
A temple ruin fading into rock
We still may trace, though many a mouldered block
The gradual growth of gnarled oak divorce
Far from its fellow with unheeded force;
While i\7 and vine, lush eglantine and bramble.
In fair confusion o'er the ruin ramble.
Yet in a far-off long-forgotten day
Men with hushed voices hither came to pray.
To thee, O sacred stream ! they raised the shrine.
Deeming thee animate with life Divine.
How have their memories vanished now in air !
We vainly ask what manner of men they were.
Our human generations fleeting wonder,
Passing along thine everlasting thunder ;
Shadows of earth, with shadows of the sky,
We fleet athwart thy sheeny foam and fly,
We are born, and thou remainest, and we die.
Children have played around thy playful spring,
And many lovers have loved wandering
In thy romantic gorge ; while lonely poets come,
Passionate for the voice of thy tumultuous home,
Laying to heart thy rush of light and sound
Voluminous, to sing in turn if they be worthy found.
Prophets of old in meditative mood,
Solitary dwellers with a salvage brood.
Nursed here a smouldering fire of indignation.
In vision received unearthly revelation :
Ever thy hanging sound stupendous wrought
Within their souls unfathomable thought,
Until aroused, inspired with thy tempestuous gladness.
They blew a people to flame with their own heroic madness !

All these have passed ! Hardly a human thing
Hath left a trace by thine eternal spring.
And yet in sooth what gleams upon the rock
Hard by the shattering of the water shock ?
A marble tablet with some gilded letters !
Whereon the country folk inscribe them debtors
Of one who deigned to visit and to praise
Their parish waterfall in former days !
Who then among the shades that came and went
Amid the centuries' evanishment.
Who then have names regilded year by year,
Lest the remembrance of them disappear
With other mortal memories from here ?
Lest the tradition of the wondrous fact
That these have seen, yea, praised the cataract
'Mong children's children be at length forgotten,
And even such magnanimity lie rotten !

A few have seen thine awful face, O youth
Ever renewed ! a few with love and innocence and truth,
Or splendid power of personality
May seem to claim a fellowship with thee,
To claim some solemn kindred with the sound
Imperial inhabiting the gulf profound !

Yet ithese have ne'er a record carven in marble,
Or by the fall, or by the sylvan warble !
What shadow more illustrious than all
Claims for itself such homage by the fall ?
Demands among the seons his day alone
From the awful hunger of pale Oblivion ?

I read — am I deceived? — a common king!
Among the waifs indifferent Time may fling.
Stranding them here — of kings there moulder many.
No people without hereditary zany !
But one of these, living his little hour,
Vouchsafed, it seems, to leave a royal dower,
With a decoration deigning to invest,
O cataract ! thine adamantine breast !
Glancing in sooth to what he stood before.
He deemed he saw thee, deafened with thy roar
He deemed he heard thee ; but his mind divided
Now wandered to the game the hills provided,
Now to one surly, ill-conditioned hind
Who had not doffed his bonnet, nor inclined.
Howbeit the monarch, turning to the mayor,
Was pleased his satisfaction to declare.
Was gracious to the local waterfall ;
And the mayor took it as a personal
Compliment, bowing almost with an air
Of deprecating such distinction rare —
As if the king had patted his little boy,
And he could only wish that less alloy
Were mingled with the humble offering
He dared to set before so great a king.
For this in sooth was but the parish sight ;
They held it cheap who heard it day and night.
To every bumpkin from his earliest age
Familiar ; but yonder in its cage
They kept the curious thing that brought them patronage.
Half proud of it, they felt it did them credit,
As if themselves, not God Almighty, fed
. . . Did a Prince really condescend to nod
Familiarly to this great work of God !
Surely the cataract made a modest hush,
Became suffused with a retiring blush,
Yea, and the tittering fluttered cavern fountain
Convulsed with boastful bliss the tremulous old mountain !

Slave to courtly etiquette !
Military martinet!
Master of the ceremonies !
If God with lightning touched your eyes,
Then might your dazed vision see
Inviolable Liberty !

Hereditary puppet spangled gay,
Whom fullgrown babies being amused obey,
When some sardonic hidden ventriloquist
Speaks through you whatsoever he may list.
One must be more than common king to see
The glory of this immortal majesty !

Tyrant with a narrow brain.
Taking holiest names in vain.
Suffered to sport with living joys
And living woes, in place of toys ;
Ye of the wooden complacent royal faces.
Fumbling among live nerves of human races,
Clutching worm-eaten hereditary places !
Before your realm of human government
Ye stand imbecile, idle, impotent.
Not more unhearing this immortal chime
Than dark to your allotted sphere sublime !
Deaf to the long, low wail funereal
In yonder gloom, from ruined lives that call
Some one to help ! Leave ye your vantage ground.
And toil among them till the light be found !

Poor worms ! the fulsome sense of your pale marble
Contemptuous rains will insolently garble :
And if he flung the royal skeleton
(Forbid it loyalty !) with all your own
Carcasses in the welter, do ye think
Yon hurricane of waters wild would slink
Mild like a courtier from the sacred corse.
Or shatter all alike without remorse ?

Glory to God on his eternal throne !
Give glory to the lowly Man, his Son.
Some light reflected for a moment shone
From holy men and mighty : they are gone
And still we hear the water's mighty monotone :
God reigns over the universe alone !