TALLULAH FALLS by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

ALONE with nature, where her passionate mood
Deepens and deepens, till from shadowy wood,
And sombre shore the blended voices sound
Of five infuriate torrents, wanly crowned
With such pale-misted foam as that which starts
To whitening lips from frenzied human hearts!
Echo repeats the thunderous roll and boom
Of these vexed waters through the foliaged gloom
So wildly, in their grand reverberant swell
Borne from dim hillside to rock-bounded dell,
That oft the tumult seems
The vast fantastic dissonance of dreams;
A roar of adverse elements, torn and riven
In dark recesses of some billowy hell,
But sending ever through the tremulous air,
Defiance laden with august despair
Up to the calm and pitiful face of heaven!

From ledge to ledge the impetuous current sweeps
Forever tortured, tameless, unsubdued,
Amid the darkly humid solitude,
Through waste and turbulent deeps
It cleaves a terrible pathway, overrun
Only by doubtful flickerings of the sun,
To meet with swift cross-eddies, whirlpools set
On verges of some measureless abyss,
Above the stir and fret,
The lion's hollow roar, or serpent hiss
Of whose unceasing conflict waged below
The gorges of the giant precipice,
Shines the mild splendor of a heavenly bow.

But blinded to the rainbow's glory shed
Fair as the aureole 'round an angel's head
Still with dark vapors all about it furled
The demon spirit of this watery world,
Through many a maddened curve, and stormy throe,
Speeds to its last tumultuous overflow,
When downward hurled, from 'wildering shock to shock,
Its wild heart breaks upon the outmost rock
That guards the empire of this rule of wrath!
Henceforth, beyond the shattered cataract's path,
The tempered spirit of a gentler guide
Enters, methinks the unperturbed tide;
Its current sparkling in the blest release
From wasting passion, glides through shores of peace, --
O'er brightened spaces and clear confluent calms,
Float the hale breathings of near meadow balms,
And still by silent cove and silvery reach,
The murmurous wavelets pass;
Lip the green tendrils of the delicate grass,
And tranquil hour by hour,
Uplift a crystal glass,
Wherein each lithe Narcissus-flower,
May mark its slender frame and beauteous face
Mirrored in softly visionary grace,
And still, by fairy-bight and shelving beach,
The fair waves whisper low as leaves in June
(Small gossips lisping in their woodland bower),
And still, the ever-lessening tide
Lapses, as glides some once imperious life
From haughty summits of demoniac pride,
Hatred and vengeful strife,
Down through time's twilight-valleys purified;
Yearning, alone, to keep
A long-predestined tryst with night and sleep,
Beneath the dew-soft kisses of the moon!

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