Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
The Falls of Niagara
By John Gardiner Calkins Brainard (1795–1828)T
While I look upward to thee. It would seem
As if God poured thee from his hollow hand,
And hung his bow upon thine awful front;
And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour’s sake,
The sound of many waters; and had bade
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,
And notch His centuries in the eternal rocks.
That hear the question of that voice sublime?
Oh, what are all the notes that ever rung
From war’s vain trumpet, by thy thundering side?
Yea, what is all the riot man can make
In his short life, to thy unceasing roar?
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him
Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains?—a light wave,
That breaks, and whispers of its Maker’s might.