From lapse to lapse, till life be done,
And the spent current cease to run.
One only prayer I dare to make,
As onward thus my course I take, -
Oh, be my falls as bright as thine!
May heaven's relenting rainbow shine
Upon the mist that circles me,
As soft as now it hangs o'er thee!
Mongaup, the River, N. Y.
THE FALLS OF THE MONGAUP.
STRUGGLING along the mountain path,
We hear, amid the gloom,
Like a roused giant's voice of wrath,
A deep-toned, sullen boom:
Emerging on the platform high,
Burst sudden to the startled eye
Rocks, woods, and waters, wild and rude,
A scene of savage solitude.
Swift as an arrow from the bow,
Headlong the torrent leaps,
Then tumbling round, in dazzling snow
And dizzy whirls it sweeps;
Then, shooting through the narrow aisle
Of this sublime cathedral pile,
Amid its vastness, dark and grim,
It peals its everlasting hymn.
Pyramid on pyramid of rock
Tower upward wild and riven,
As piled by Titan hands to mock
The distant smiling heaven.
And where its blue streak is displayed,
Branches their emerald network braid
So high, the eagle in his flight
Seems but a dot upon the sight.
Here columned hemlocks point in air
Their cone-like fringes green;
Their trunks hang knotted, black, and bare,
Like spectres o'er the scene;
Here, lofty crag and deep abyss,
And awe-inspiring precipice;
There, grottos bright in wave-worn gloss,
And carpeted with velvet moss.
No wandering ray e'er kissed with light
This rock-walled sable pool,
Spangled with foam-gems thick and white,
And slumbering deep and cool;
But where yon cataract roars down,
Set by the sun, a rainbow crown
Is dancing o'er the dashing strife,
Hope glittering o'er the storm of life.
Beyond, the smooth and mirrored sheet
So gently steals along,
The very ripples, murmuring sweet,
Scarce drown the wild bee's song;
The violet from the grassy side
Dips its blue chalice in the tide;
And, gliding o'er the leafy brink,
The deer, unfrightened, stoops to drink.
Myriads of man's time-measured race
Have vanished from the earth,
Nor left a memory of their trace,
Since first this scene had birth;
These waters, thundering now along,
Joined in Creation's matin-song;
And only by their dial-trees
Have known the lapse of centuries !
WAS a little brass half-circlet,
Deep gnawed by rust and stain,
That the farmer's urchin brought me,
Ploughed up in old Monmouth's plain;
On that spot where the hot June sunshine
Once a fire more deadly knew,
And a bloodier color reddened
Where the red June roses blew;
Where the moon of the early harvest
Looked down through the shimmering leaves,
And saw where the reaper of battle
Had gathered his human sheaves :
Old Monmouth, so touched with glory,
So tinted with burning shame,
As Washington's pride we remember,
Or Lee's long-tarnished name.
'T was a little brass half-circlet;
And knocking the rust away,
And clearing the ends and the middle
From their burial-shroud of clay,
I saw, through the damp of ages,
And the thick, disfiguring grime,
The buckle-heads and the rowel
Of a spur of the olden time.
And I said, "What gallant horseman,
Who revels and rides no more,
Perhaps twenty years back, or fifty,
On his heel that weapon wore?
Was he riding away to his bridal,
When the leather snapped in twain?
Was he thrown, and dragged by the stirrup,
With the rough stones crushing his brain?"
Then I thought of the Revolution,
Whose tide still onward rolls;
Of the free and the fearless riders,
Of the "times that tried men's souls."
What if, in the day of battle
That raged and rioted here,
It had dropped from the foot of a soldier,
As he rode in his mad career?
What if it had ridden with Forman,
When he leaped through the open door,
With the British dragoon behind him,
In his race o'er the granary-floor?
What if-but the brain grows dizzy
With the thoughts of the rusted spur-
What if it had fled with Clinton,
Or charged with Aaron Burr?
But bravely the farmer's urchin
Had been scraping the rust away;
And, cleaned from the soil that swathed it,
The spur before me lay.
Here are holes in the outer circle;
No common heel it has known,
For each space, I see by the setting,
Once held some precious stone.
And here, not far from the buckle
Do my eyes deceive their sight?
Two letters are here engraven,
That initial a hero's might!
"G. W.!" Saints of heaven! -
Can such things in our lives occur?
Do I grasp such a priceless treasure?
Was this George Washington's spur?
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