The Falls Of The Ohio

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 rest. Behold th’ Ohio Falls: see how it seethes! Though hardly heard from this high, wooded point, Yet how it still confuses tongue and ear With its subdued and low monotonous roar! Not as it did, however, when we stood And marked it from the spanning of the bridge Rushing beneath, impetuous as a herd,-- A tameless herd, with manes of flying spray,-- Between the pillars towering above. No more does it confound us and confuse; Its clamor here is softened to a sound, Incessant and subdued, like that which haunts The groves of spring, when, like some dim surprise, A wind, precursor of the rain, rides down From a gray cloud and sets the leafy tongues Cool-gossiping of the approaching shower. There runs the dam; and where its dark line cuts The river’s sheen, already you may see The ripples glancing to the summer sun, As if a host had couched a thousand spears And tossed a thousand plumes of fleecy foam, In answer to the challenge of the Falls, Blown from his limestone battlements, and cried From his wave-builded city’s roaring walls. And there, you see, the waves like champions charge; Crowding, wild form on form, their foam-hoofs beat The ragged rocks that roll them on their way: Billowing they come; knight-like, to ringing lists, With shout on shout, tossing a thousand plumes, A thousand spears in sparkling tournament; Lifting, opposing each, a silvery shield Or shining pennon, now that sinks or soars, And many a glittering sword of twinkling foam, And many a helmet, shattered in flakes of froth, That, to the trumpeting wind, hisses away: While, o’er it all, swell out the rush and roar Of onset, as of battle borne afar.-- On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop! On, on, along the sandy banks that fling Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay Their ruinous rush, the knightly strife of waves, Warring, and winding wild their watery horns.

Look, where a thousand oily eddies whirl, And turn and turn like wheels of liquid steel Below this headland! ’Tis a place that none Has bottomed yet with sounding lead and line. Like some huge kraken, coiling vast its length, The Eddy sleeps; and, bending from the shores, The spotted sycamores have gazed and gazed, Watching its slumber as gray giants might A dragon in the hollow of gaunt hills, Its serpent bulk wound round some magic hoard. So long they’ve watched, their ancient backs have grown Humped, gnarled, and bent, but still they gaze and gaze, Leaning above; and from the glassy waves Their images stare back their wonderment. Haply they see the guardian Genius lie At the dark bottom in an oozy cave Of coral; webbed, recumbent on his mace Of mineral; his locks of dripping green Circling a crown of ore; his fishy eyes Dull with the aqueous dullness of his realms. But when the storm’s abroad and whips 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 foundation of the stream Rises, a monarch, crowned with iron crown, And hurls his challenge upward at the storm, And rages through the waters; heaves and breaks Through the wild waves, whose round and murky bulks, Ribbed white with foam, wallow their monster way, Like giant herds, along yon edge of rock O’erstrewn with petrifactions of far time; Mollusk and trilobite and honeycomb Of whitest coral; and with mass on mass Of root-like reptiles; writhings turned to rock; Huge saurian bulks that, haply, sported there, Convolved; and, in a moment, when the change,-- Which made and unmade continents and seas, That teemed and groaned with mammoth and plesiosaur,-- Came, with upheaval of the universe, Thro’ all their monster spines were struck to stone.

There where uprises a wild knoll, o’erstrewn With wrecks of ancient forest, in mid-stream Once rose an island, green and beautiful With willow and beech, poplar and sycamore; A river-island where the woodman built,-- Stream-guarded from the savage-haunted shore,-- His rude log cabin. Here he sowed his maize; Here saw it tassel in the summer heat, And glance like ranks of feathered Indians through The glimmering vistas of the broken wood; Here reaped and sheaved its stalks, all ivory-eared, In shocks like wigwam rows, when like a maid, An Indian maid, ruddy in dogwood beads, The autumn came, soft o’er the sunset hills, That blushed for love, and underneath her feet Cast untold gold in leaves and yellow fruit. Here dwelt the pioneer and here he died, And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth And loam of what was once an island; now A bed of limestone rock and water pools,-- 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 In giant strokes as of some Titan hammer;-- A mound of stump-pierced soil where once an isle,-- As rich and fair in forest and in field As any isle that rises to a sail In tropic seas,--arose to kiss the sun.

There lies the other half of what was once Corn Island: broad the channel beats between. Lower it lies, and mantled with dwarf brakes Of willow and of cottonwood and beech, Degenerate offsprings of the mighty boles That once o’erbrowed the stream in majesty Of tall primeval beauty. In the morn, Ere yet the east assumes its faintest blush, Here you may hear the melancholy snipe Piping, or see her paddling in the pools That splash the low bed of the rocky soil.

Here once the Indian stole in natural craft From wahoo-bush to bush, from tree to tree, His head plumes like a bird, below, above, Fluttering 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 blue with flint. And while the deep flamingo-colored west Flamed on his ruddy cheek, and airy fire Struck rosy ’thwart the stream, he, swift as thought, Strung his quick bow and through the gray wild goose, That rose with clamor from the rushy pool, Sent a fleet arrow; crested with the quills Which yesterday, perhaps, its mate’s gray wing Made beautiful; and plucked to decorate The painted shaft that should to-day speed home And redden all their white with kindred blood: It falling, gasping at his moccasined feet, Breathed out its wild life, while the lonely brave Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills Answered his exultation with a whoop.

1885.