 | Poems of home and country |  |
326
THE ELOQUENCE OF NATURE.
Go ye, and read at length the mystic loreWhere some Niagara's dark waters roar.
Draw nearer; the tremble at the amazing plan;
See how they scorn the pygmy works of man.
Admire the swelling, grand, foreboding hush,
Where they are gathering for the awful rush
That bears them thundering down the dizzy steep,
To mingle, boiling, in the foamy deep.
List to the rumbling of the mighty floods,—
Their eloquence is but the type of God's;
Or, note the tempest's wrath, the lightning's glare,
The rainbow's image on the cloudy air,—
Bright, beautiful, divine, too fair to stay,
Where all created beauty fades away.
Think how the whirlwind's wrath, the thunder's pride,
Terrific, echoing from the mountain's side—
Suns, planets, comets, on their pathway rolled,
Like brilliant, burning, moving orbs of gold;
The summer's radiant glow, mild autumn's ray,—
All, all, the great Creator's might display.
Each flower that sheds its fragrance on the air
Shows some divinest signet fastened there;
Exalts the soul above this meanest clod,
And bids us see and hear a present God,
Whose voice of majesty no words confine,—
An eloquence eternal, deep, divine.
| Poems of home and country | |