Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume V. Nature. 1904. | | | | IV. Inland Waters: Highlands | | The Fall of Niagara | | John Gardiner Calkins Brainard (1795–1828) |
| | | THE THOUGHTS are strange that crowd into my brain, | |
| While I look upward to thee. It would seem | |
| As if God poured thee from his hollow hand, | |
| And hung his bow upon thine awful front, | |
| And spoke in that loud voice which seemed to him | 5 |
| 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 centuries in the eternal rocks. | |
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| Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we, | 10 |
| That hear the question of that voice sublime? | |
| O, what are all the notes that ever rung | |
| From war’s vain trumpet, by thy thundering side? | |
| Yea, what is all the riot man can make | |
| In his short life, to thy unceasing roar? | 15 |
| And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him | |
| Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters far | |
| Above its loftiest mountains?—a light wave, | |
| That breaks, and whispers of its Maker’s might. | | | | |
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