Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 306=386.= the Falls of the Mongaup
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Struggling along the mountain path, We hear, amid the gloom, Like a roused giant's voice of wrath, A deep-toned, sullen boom: Emerging on the platform high, Burst sudden to the startled eye Rocks, woods, and waters, wild and rude— A scene of savage solitude.
Swift as an arrow from the bow; Headlong the torrent leaps, Then tumbling round, in dazzling snow And dizzy whirls it sweeps; Then, shooting through the narrow aisle Of this sublime cathedral pile, Amidst its vastness, dark and grim, It peals its everlasting hymn.
Pyramid on pyramid of rock Towers upward, wild and riven, As piled by Titan hand, to mock The distant smiling heaven. And where its blue streak is displayed, Branches their emerald net-work braid So high, the eagle in his flight Seems but a dot upon the sight.
Here column'd hemlocks point in air Their cone-like fringes green; Their trunks hang knotted, black and bare, Like spectres o'er the scene; Here lofty crag and deep abyss, And awe-inspiring precipice; There grottoes bright in wave-worn gloss, And carpeted with velvet moss.
No wandering ray e'er kissed with light This rock-walled sable pool, Spangled with foam-gems thick and white, And slumbering deep and cool; But where yon cataract roars down, Set by the sun, a rainbow crown Is dancing, o'er the dashing strife— Hope glittering o'er the storm of life.
Beyond, the smooth and mirror'd sheet So gently steals along, The very ripples, murmuring sweet, Scarce drown the wild bee's song; The violet from the grassy side Dips its blue chalice in the tide; And, gliding o'er the leafy brink, The deer, unfrightened, stoops to drink.
Myriads of man's time-measured race Have vanished from the earth, Nor left a memory of their trace, Since first this scene had birth; These waters, thundering now along, Joined in Creation's matin-song; And only by their dial-trees Have known the lapse of centuries!
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=Laura M.H. Thurston, 1812-1842.= (Manual, P. 524.)