and night,
Which vary not their ever-during peal.
Burning impatience, not to be controlled,
Has hurried on my steps until I stand
Within the breath of thy descending wave.
The night conceals thy wonders, but enrobes
Thee with a grandeur, wild, mysterious,
As with thy spray around me, and the wind
Which rushes upward from thy dark abyss,
And thy deep organ pealing in my ear,
Thy mass is all unseen, and I behold
Only the ghost-like whiteness of thy foam.
The morning comes. The clouds have disappeared,
And the clear silver of the eastern sky
Gives promise of a glowing summer sun.
In the fresh dawn, I hasten to the rock
Which overhangs the ever-boiling deep,
And all the wonders of Niagara
Are spread before me--not the simple dash
Of falling waters, which the fancy drew,
But myriad forms of beautiful and grand
Press on the senses and o'erwhelm the mind.
Yon bright, broad waters on their channel sleep
As if they dreamed of the most peaceful flow
To the far-distant sea. But now their course
Accelerates on their inclining path,
Though still 'tis with the appearance of a calm
And dignified reluctance, and the wave
Remains unbroken, till the inward force
Increasingly silently, like that which breaks
The short laborious quiet of the insane,
Bursts all restraint, and the wild waters, tossed
In fiercest tumult, uncontrollable,
Menace all life within their giant grasp;
Leaping and raging in their frantic glee,
Dashing their spray aloft, as on they rush
In wild confusion to the dreadful steep.
An instant on the verge they seem to pause,
As if, even in their frenzy, such a gulf
Were horrible, then slowly bending down,
Plunge headlong where the never-ceasing roar
Ascends, and the revolving clouds of spray,
Forever during yet forever new.
The sun appears. And, straightway, on the cloud
Which veils the struggles of the fallen wave
In everlasting secrecy, and wafts
Away, like smoke of incense, up to Heaven,
Beams forth the radiant diadem of light,
Brilliant and fixed amid the moving mass;
And beauty comes to deck the glorious scene.
For as the horizontal sunbeams rest
Upon the deep blue summit, or unfold
The varying hues of green, that pass away
Into the white of the descending foam,
So colors of the l