"Flow on, forever, in thy glorious robe Of terror and of beauty. God has set His rainbow on thy forehead, and the clouds Mantled around thy feet. And He doth give Thy voice of thunder power to speak of Him Eternally, bidding the lip of man Keep silence, and upon thy rocky altar pour Incense of awe-struck praise. And who can dare To lift the insect trump of earthly hope, Or love, or sorrow, 'mid the peal sublime Of thy tremendous hymn! Even ocean shrinks Back from thy brotherhood, and his wild waves Retire abashed; for he doth sometimes seem To sleep like a spent laborer, and recall His wearied billows from their vieing play, And lull them to a cradle calm: but thou, With everlasting, undecaying tide Dost rest not night nor day. The morning stars, When first they sang o'er young creation's birth, Heard thy deep anthem; and those wrecking fires That wait the archangel's signal, to dissolve The solid earth, shall find Jehovah's name Graven, as with a thousand spears, On thine unfathomed page. Each leafy bough That lifts itself within thy proud domain Doth gather greenness from thy living spray, And tremble at the baptism. Lo! yon birds Do venture boldly near, bathing their wings Amid thy foam and mist. 'Tis meet for them To touch thy garment here, or lightly stir The snowy leaflets of this vapor wreath, Who sport unharmed on the fleecy cloud, And listen to the echoing gate of heaven Without reproof. But as for us, it seems Scarce lawful with our broken tones to speak Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint Thy glorious features with our pencil's point, Or woo thee with the tablet of a song, Were profanation. Thou dost make the soul A wondering witness of thy majesty; And while it rushes with delirious joy To tread thy vestibule, dost chain its step, And check its rapture, with the humbling view Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand In the dread presence of the Invisible, As if to answer to its God through thee." The following lines were written by the late John G. C. Brainard, who never saw the Falls. They were dashed off at a single short sitting, for the head of the literary column of the _Connecticut Mirror_, of Hartford, which he then edited: "THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. "The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain While I look upward to thee. It would seem As if God pour'd thee from his 'hollow hand' And hung his bow upon thine awful front, And spoke in that loud voice which seem'd 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 cen'tries in the eternal rocks.