"SHOOTING NIAGARA."
I.
I reverence thy rugged grasp of truth, Strong champion of right manhood ! Yet methinks Wise old may stray as far as hasty youth.
With equal drops God's rain on each that drinks, Stark oak or tenderest floweret, pours its love ; In equal breathings of free air above All beasts and birds may joy, though bird and beast And blade and stem be various in degree, In subtlest grades from greatest to the least.
So share they all great Nature's harmony, None silent, none subdued. Oh, undiviue Were praiseless servitude ! Shall man alone Silence his fellow-man, or only list his moan ?
Would the debasing utterance was not thine!
It.
Niagara! Shall we then swim up the fall, To which the gathering ages ever rolled, And seek the puny brooks that rudely brawl, Where each dull boulder may their force withhold, And never yet could stay them ? As of old, The current still must widen on its way, Draining all kindred rills. Then let us pray True England to her earliest love may hold, Law-girdled freedom. Not in mighty men
Or forceful deeds her trust. Be this her stay—
So shall she rear her honest front again,
And meet the ripening years without decay—
Her lowliest sons to love her, and her beat To dare do right against their interest.
Late wisdom in its shadows, all the Past, Rathe eagerness of promise, all to be— These separate, the eagle of the sea From that proud eaglet that erewhile did east The shadow of its westering flight afar, And reigns in its young glory, lone and free. Yet as the clear light of the latest star, Pales in the oneness of the perfect day, As mellowing youth, when past the single war It waged to establish its strong right to be, Turns with more kindness to the parent sway, In ripened love that years no more can mar ; So with old kindred and new ties at last, Pray we the ocean-brood be one to-day.
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