At the roots of the mountains—
The wreck of a world —
Where the congregate waters
Of myriad fountains
Together are hurled —
The precipice totters
With ruinous weighty
Leaning over the river
That darts with a shiver,
As of a lashed hound,
Now, headlong, or never,
To plunge with a bound
Through that perilous gate!
From meadows that offer
Their sunniest nooks
To the purple amorpha,
And flowers without number,
Gold, azure, and red,
Multitudinous brooks
In the low river-bed.
Like glittering arrows
Flown home to their quiver,
Unite in a river.
One moment to slumber,
Ere hurled to the narrows
It rushes in dread,
With rocks to encumber
Its turbulent flow,
And rocks overhead,
Bowing fearfully low.
Shot down from its level.
Clear, sunny, and large,
Its mirror-like bevel
Leans smooth to the rock.
Though swift as the lightning
It shoots to its targe.
Till, shattered and whitening,
'Tis crushed by the shock
Of its thunderous charge.
Hemmed in by the ledges,
How fiercely it wedges
Its terrible path
To the jaws of that ruin,
Where, ages on ages,
It gnawed as it gnaws,
And raged as it rages,
Incessantly hewing
A way for its wrath,
In those terrible jaws.
'Tis the shallow Nebraska,
The limpid Nebraska,
Now goaded to frenzy,
Or drunk with the glee
Of some Sibylline fancy
Of all it may be.
Shot down from its level
Of lifeful repose,
A jubilant masquer
In carnival madness,
And frenzy of gladness,
In roaring and revel,
The foaming Nebraska —
The shouting Nebraska,
Exultingly goes!
Ever deeper and deeper,
As steeper and steeper
The gulfs of their torment
Descend like a leaper,
The waters are piled
In an eddying mass;
And the foam of their ferment
Ascends in the pass,
As white, o'er the storm-rent
Atlantic, the corm'rant
Goes driftingly wild.
With a half-timid shiver
The goat of the ledges
Peers over their edges,
And leaps the loud river;
Far up in the blue,
Flitting by in the sky
Like a lark to the view,
Or an animate mote —
The jaws of that inner
Gulf's watery Gehenna
Yawn upward so high
O'er its cavernous throat.
Adown the abysses
The swift river pours;
It rustles and hisses,
It thunders and roars.
With clanging and ranging,
Now hither, now thither —
Momently sundered
And tumbled together
Torn by a hundred
Impetuous wills,
Baffled and frantic,
Amid the gigantic
Debris of the hills —
Rushing and winding ;
Plunging in cataracts. Leaping in fountains —
So the mad water acts,
Rending and finding
A path through the mountains.
'Twas thus the Nebraska,
The fettered Nebraska,
Yet young from the lap
Of its Titaness Mother —
Untortured to grind
In the mill of a Tasker
As slave to another—
Nor leaving the sap
Of its vigor behind
In the roseate charms
Of the Prairie's arms
Was mighty to snap
Its mountainous bands,
And out, with a shout,
Leap, wild as the clap
Of the Thunderer's hands!
The dark, roaring gap,
With its precipice cap.
Where the river-floods fell
In their mutinous wrath,
Was the Canon's Gehenna —
Its watery hell!
The smoke of whose torment,
A nebulous banner —
Involved, like a cerement,
The ruinous dell
That plowed its abysses
Along in the path
Of a braver Ulysses
Than old story hath —
The eagle-like soarer,
Bold Chief and Explorer,
Whose foot trod as well
Over skied precipices,
As on the green math
With his bounding Signora.
The Cañon