Madison Cawein - The Ohio Falls lyrics

Here on this jutting headland, where the trees Spread a dusk carpet for the sun to cast And count his golden guineas on, we'll stay; For hence is the best prospect of the Falls, Whose roar no more astounds the startled ear, As when we bent and marked it from the bridge Seething beneath and bounding like a steed— A tameless steed with mane of flying spray— Between the pillars rising sheer above. But mark how soft its clamor now is grown, Incessant rush like that of vernal groves When, like some sweet surprise, a wand'ring wind, Precursor of the coming rain, rides down From a gray cloud and sets their leafy tongues A-gabbing of the fresh, impending shower. There runs the dam, and where its dark line cuts The river's sheen, already you may see The ripples glancing to the fervid sun, As if the waves had couched a hundred spears And tossed a hundred plumes of fleecy foam In answer to the challenge of the Falls, Blown on his bugle from the battlements Of his subaqueous city's rocky walls. And now you see their maddened coursers charge, Hear wavy hoof-strokes on the jagged stones, That pave the pathway of the current, beat, While billowing they ride to ringing lists, With shout and yell, and toss their hundred plumes, And shock their riply spears in tournament Upon the opposing billows' shining shields. Now sinks a pennon, but 'tis raised again; There falls or breaks a spear or sparkling sword; A shattered helmet flies in flakes of foam And on the frightened wind hisses away: And o'er it all you hear the sound, the roar Of waves that fall in onset or that strive. On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop! On, on, along the sandy banks that fling Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay The riotous waves that ride and hurl along In casque and shield and wind their wat'ry horns. And there where thousand oily eddies whirl, And turn and turn like busy wheels of steel, Is the Big Eddy, whose deep bottom none As yet have felt with sounding plummet-line. Like a huge giant, wily in its strength, The Eddy lies; and bending from the shore The spotted sycamores have looked and looked, Watching his motions as a school boy might A sleeping serpent coiled upon his path. So long they've watched that their old backs have grown Hump'd, gnarl'd, and crooked, nor seem they this to heed, But gaze and gaze, and from the glossy waves Their images stare back their wonderment. Mayhap they've seen the guardian Genius lie At its dark bottom in an oozy cave Of shattered rock, recumbent on his mace Of mineral; his locks of dripping green Circling a crown of ore; his fishy eyes Dull with the monotony of his aqueous realms. But when the storm's abroad and smites the waves With stinging lashes of the myriad rain, Or scars with thunder some ancestral oak, Sire of a forest, then he wakes in wrath, And on the dark foundations of the stream Stands monarch of the flood in iron crown, And murmurs till the tempest fiends above Stand stark with awe, and all the eddy breaks To waves like those whose round and murky bulks. Ribbed white with foam, wallow like battened swine Along yon ridge of ragged rock o'erstrewn With petrifactions of Time's earliest dawn; Mollusks and trilobites and honey-combs Of coral white; and here and there a ma** Of what seems writhing reptiles there convolved, And in one moment when the change did come, Which made and unmade continents and seas, That teemed and groaned with dire monstrosities, Had froze their glossy spines to sable stones. There where uprises a dun knoll o'erstrewn With black and rotten stumps in the mid river, Erst rose an island green and beautiful With willows, beeches, dappled sycamores; Corn Island, on whose rich and fertile soil The early pioneers a colony Attempted once to found, ere ever this Fair "City of the Falls"—now echoing to The tingling bustle of its busy trade— Was dreamed of. Here the woodman built His rude log cabin; here he sowed his maize; Here saw it ta**el 'neath the Summer's smile, And glance like ranks of feathered Indians thro' The misty vistas of the broken woods; Here reaped and sheaved its wealth of ivory ears When Autumn came like a brown Indian maid Tripping from the pink sunset o'er the hills, That blushed for love and cast beneath her feet Untold of gold in leaves and yellow fruit. Here lived the pioneer and here he died, And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth Of that long isle which now disparted stands, And nothing save a bed of limestone rock,— Where in the quarry you may see the blast Spout heavenward the dust and dirt and stone, And flap and pound its echoes 'round the hills Like giant strokes of some huge airy hammer,— And that lone mound of stumpy earth to show That there once stood an isle as rich and fair As any isle that rises up to kiss The sun and dream in tropic seas of balm. There lies the other half of what was once Corn Island; a broad channel flows between. And this low half, mantled with a dwarf growth Of what was once high brakes and forest land, Goose Island now is named. In the dim morn, Ere yet the East a**umes her faintest blush. Here may you hear the melancholy snipe Piping, or see her paddling in the pools That splash the low bed of the rocky isle. Once here the Indian stole in natural craft From brush to brush, his head plumes like a bird Flutt'ring and nodding 'mid the undergrowth; In his brown hand the pliant, polished bow, And at his back his gaudy quiver filled With tufted arrows headed with blue flint. And while the deep flamingo colored West Flamed on his ruddy cheek its airy fire, Strung his quick bow and thro' the gray wild goose, That rose with clamor from the rushy pool, Launched a fleet barb, crested with quills—perchance Plucked yestere'en from its dead mate's gray wing To decorate the painted shaft that should Dabble to-day their white in its mate's blood;— It falling, gasping at its moccasined feet, Its wild life breathed away, while the glad brave Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills Answered his exultation with a whoop.