  FROM the precipice whence our first view of this Fall is taken, the descent is steep and slippery to the very brink of the torrent, which it is necessary to cross on the wild blocks that lie scattered in its rocky bed. From thence, literally buried in forest foliage, the tourist will enjoy a very different, but perhaps more striking and picturesque, view than the other. The stream, at a vast height above him, is seen leaping from ledge to ledge,—sometimes lost, sometimes sparkling in sunshine, till it courses impetuously beneath the rock on which he is seated, and is lost in the deep unbroken obscurity of the forest. The rocky ledges above, worn by time, have the appearance of deep caverns, and beautifully relieve the fall of the light and silvery stream. In the winter, the vast icicles which are suspended from the ledges of rock, and shine like pillars against the deep obscurity of the caverns behind, afford a most romantic spectacle, one which has afforded a subject to Bryant for one of the most imaginative of his poems. THE WRECK OF THE ANCIENT COASTER. Her side is in the water, Her keel is in the sand, And her bowsprit rest on the low gray rock That bounds the sea and land. Her deck is without a mast, And sand and shells are there, And the teeth of decay are gnawing her planks In the sun and the sultry air. No more on the river’s bosom, When sky and wave are calm, And the clouds are in summer quietness, And the cool night-breath is balm, Will she glide in the swan-like stillness Of the moon in the blue above,— A messenger from other lands, A beacon to hope and love. No more in the midnight tempest Will she mock the mounting sea, Strong in her oaken timbers, And her white sail’s bravery. She hath borne, in days departed, Warm hearts upon her deck; Those hearts, like her, are mouldering now, The victims and the wreck Of time, whose touch erases Each vestige of all we love; The wanderers, home returning, Who gazed that deck above, And they who stood to welcome Their loved ones on that shore, Are gone,—and the place that knew them Shall know them nevermore. ......... Fitz-Greene Halleck. HUDSON RIVER. Rivers that roll most musical in song Are often lovely to the mind alone; The wanderer muses, as he moves along Their barren banks, on glories not their own. When, to give substance to his boyish dreams, He leaves his own, far countries to survey, Oft must he think, in greeting foreign streams, “Their names alone are beautiful, not they.” If chance he mark the dwindled Arno pour A tide more meagre than his native Charles; Or views the Rhone when summer’s heat is o’er, Subdued and stagnant in the fen of Arles; Or when he sees the slimy Tiber fling His sullen tribute at the feet of Rome,— Oft to his thought must partial memory bring More noble waves, without renown, at home. Now let him climb the Catskill, to behold The lordly Hudson, marching to the main, And say what bard, in any land of old, Had such a river to inspire his strain! Along the Rhine gray battlements and towers Declare what robbers once the realm possessed; But here Heaven’s handiwork surpasseth ours, And man has hardly more than built his nest. No storied castle overawes these heights, Nor antique arches check the current’s play, Nor mouldering architrave the mind invites To dream of deities long passed away. No Gothic buttress, or decaying shaft Of marble, yellowed by a thousand years, Lifts a great land-mark to the little craft,— A summer cloud! that comes and disappears. But cliffs, unaltered from their primal form Since the subsiding of the deluge, rise And hold their savins to the upper storm, While far below the skiff securely plies. Farms, rich not more in meadows than in men Of Saxon mould, and strong for every toil, Spread o’er the plain or scatter through the glen Boeotian plenty on a Spartan soil. Then, where the reign of cultivation ends, Again the charming wilderness begins; From steep to steep one solemn wood extends, Till some new hamlet’s rise the boscage thins. And these deep groves forever have remained Touched by no axe, by no proud owner nursed; As now they stand they stood when Pharaoh reigned, Lineal descendants of creation’s first. ......... No tales we know are chronicled of thee In ancient scrolls; no deeds of doubtful claim Have hung a history on every tree, And given each rock its fable and a fame. But neither here hath any conqueror trod, Nor grim invaders from barbarian climes; No horrors feigned of giant or of god Pollute thy stillness with recorded crimes. Here never yet have happy fields laid waste, The ravished harvest and the blasted fruit, The cottage ruined and the shrine defaced, Tracked the foul passage of the feudal brute. “Yet, O Antiquity!” the stranger sighs, “Scenes wanting thee soon pall upon the view; The soul’s indifference dulls the sated eyes, Where all is fair indeed,—but all is new.” False thought! Is age to crumbling walls confined? To Grecian fragments and Egyptian bones? Hath Time no monuments to raise the mind, More than old fortresses and sculptured stones? Call not this new which is the only land That wears unchanged the same primeval face Which, when just dawning from its Maker’s hand, Gladdened the first great grandsire of our race. Nor did Euphrates with an earlier birth Glide past green Eden towards the unknown south, Than Hudson broke upon the infant earth, And kissed the ocean with his nameless mouth. Twin-born with Jordan, Ganges, and the Nile! Thebes and the pyramids to thee are young! Oh, had thy waters burst from Britain’s isle, Till now perchance they had not flowed unsung. Thomas William Parsons. |
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