The Poetess at Niagara

O there are moments, in our pilgrimage

   Over Life’s barren waster, that will repay

Long years of gloom, and lend us nerve to wage

New warfare with the ills before us, when

   The storm lowers darkest and the fierce array

Of evil fates rise spectre-like again

   To vex and try us;—moments that do give

   The life of Life, and make it good to live,

Love, Friendship, Nature, with their strong control,

   And all things good, and beautiful, that speak

The voice of God unto the inner soul,

   Do gird with strength the unstable and the weak,

And lead us on, fresh-panoplied to strife,

Against the many griefs of this our wayward life!

 

Thus, and with thoughts yet unrevealed, I mused

   As on my arm a gentle maiden eaned,

And my cold heart, that sick, and torn, and bruised,

   From earth, and earth's poor joys was almost weaned,

Burned with new fire; for Nature's wonders then

Kindled to life my half-quenched soul again.

I sought Niagara with that stranger girl,

Panting to gaze upon the maddened whirl

Of the wild waters, and I felt a love

   For Nature's self, and yet more deep for her

   Whom then I deemed her fondest worshipper.

 

Musing on her my thoughts were raised above

   The trials of this life, and made to stir

With new emotions. Was she not a child

   Of Poesy,—a pilgrim to the shrine

   Of Nature, joying with a joy divine

In the unfettered freedom of the wild

Rock-cleaving cataract,—the thunder's jar,

   Or Ocean's billows when they boil around

   The high-walled capes, that sentinel the bound

Or his dread empire stretching wide and far?

It must be so, or why alone to seek:

   Scenes so sublime? to gaze where they who come

May strive in vain the soul's full thought to speak,

   And even GENIUS weeps that she is dumb?

 

Now had we paused upon the quivering height,

Where but ono step would spread the glorious sight,

In all its wild sublimity, before

The astonished gazer. An eternal roar,

   As if rung out from demon choirs in Hell,

Came from the dark abyss, and surge on surge

The northern oceans thundered from the verge

   Of mountain cliffs, and pouring headlong, fell

Crashing and splintering on the rocks below,

   Piercing far downward, till the floods recoiled,

   And round the gulf in foaming frenzy boiled,

Like waves of fire around the gulf of woe!

We turned and gazed together down the steep

My whole soul thrilled to think how hors would leap

With its sublimest ecstasy. She raised

Her lily hands.—All fired I listened, gazed,

Her red lips moved,—one moment of suspense,

My soul, how burned it with a fire intense!

She spoke, “La me! Ni’ga-ra Falls is pretty!”

And I did live through’t all to write this ditty.