Part 2 — NIAGARA.
Reading edition
[WRITTEN ON THE BANK OF THE NIAGARA RIVER—BETWEEN THE RAPIDS AND THE CATARACT.]
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BY GRENVILLE MELLEN.
———
Their roar is round me. I am on the brink
Of the great waters—and their anthem voice
Goes up amid the rainbow and the mist.
Their chorus shakes the ground. I feel the rock
On which my feet hang idly—as they hung
O’er babbling brooks in boyhood—quivering
Under the burst of music. Awful voice!
And strong, triumphant waters! Do I stand
Indeed amid your shoutings? Is it mine
To shout upon this grey cliff, where the bird,
The cloudy monarch-bird, shrieks from his crag,
O’er which he’s wheel’d for cent’ries. I lift up
My cry in echo. But no sound is there—
And my shout seems but whisper. I’m afraid
To gaze or listen! Yet my eye and ear
Are servants to a necromance that God
Alone can hold o’er Nature! Ministers,
At this immortal shrine of the Great King!
Ye never tiring waters! Let me pass
Into your presence—and within the veil
That has no holy like it—a great veil,
Within which the omnipotent outspeaks
In thunder and in majesty—within
The shadow of a leaping sea—where He
Opens His lips in wonder—and His brow
Bends ’neath a crown of glory from the skies!
My prayer has speeded to the fount of power—
The veil has lifted—and I’ve entered in!
I feel like one whose visage has been bar’d
In presence of the Father of all earth—
Like one transported to another sphere,
Of the far company that walks the sky,
Who, in the stern confronting of a God
Has scann’d his own dimensions, and fall’n back
From an archangel’s reaching, to a man—
I feel like one on whom eternity
Has graven its large language, in the lines
Which mem’ry may not pass—nor can send back!
I am as one admitted to the door
That bars me from the future—the black port
Where clust’ring worlds come round, of spirits dim
Beckon’d to mysteries of another land.
Tell not of other portals—tell me not
Of other power or awfulness. If you’ve stood
Within that curtain of Charybdis—if
You’ve seen and heard the far-voiced flood above,
Clapping its thousand hands, and heralding
Seas to a new abyss—you have seen all
The earth has of magnificent, like this—
You’ve stood within a gate that leads to God;
Where the strong beings of his mercy bend
And do his will with power—while they uphold
Our steps that grope the footstool.
O! go in
Say not that to your gaze has been unbar’d
The mightiness of majesty, until
You’ve stood within the shadow of that sea
And heard it call unto you—until eye
And ear have stood the terrible rebuke
That rolls from those great caverns—till your blood
Flies to its citadel, and you grow white
Within the whirlpool presence of a flood
That leapt thus when on soaring Ararat
Rested the broad bark of a world! say not
The front of glory has been yet reveal’d
Until you’ve felt the tempest in that cloud
And heard, ’mid rock and roar, that harmony
That finds no echo like it in the sea!
O! go in
All ye who view not earth as monuments
And men as things but built to—to decay;
Pass ye within—ye will take lesson there.
How passing is the littleness of Earth—
How broad the empyrean reach of Heaven—
How fading is the brilliance of a world—
How beautiful the majesty of God!