The Cañon

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.