I. NIAGARA

I. Flow on forever, in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty. Yes, flow on,
Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
Mantled around thy feet. And He doth give
Thy voice of thunder power to speak of Him
Eternally, bidding the lip of man
Keep silence, and upon thy rocky altar pour
Incense of awestruck praise.

2.

3.

And who can dare

To lift the insect trump of earthly hope,
Or love, or sorrow, 'mid the peal sublime.
Of thy tremendous hymn? Even Ocean shrinks
Back from thy brotherhood, and his wild waves
Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem
To sleep like a spent laborer, and recall
His wearied billows from their vexing play,
And lull them to a cradle calm; but thou
With everlasting, undecaying tide,

Doth rest not night or day.

The morning stars,

When first they sang o'er young creation's birth,
Heard thy deep anthem; and those wrecking fires
That wait the archangel's signal to dissolve

The solid earth, shall find Jehovah's name
Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears,
On thine unfathomed page. Each leafy bough
That lifts itself within thy proud domain
Doth gather greenness from thy living spray,
And tremble at the baptism.

4.

5.

Lo! yon birds

Do venture boldly near, bathing their wing
Amid thy foam and mist. 'Tis meet for them
To touch thy garment's hem—or lightly stir
The snowy leaflets of thy vapor wreath
Who sport unharmed upon the fleecy cloud,
And listen at the echoing gate of heaven,
Without reproof.
But as for us it seems

Scarce lawful with

our broken tones to speak

Familiarly of thee. Methinks to tint

Thy glorious features with our pencil's point,
Or woo thee to the tablet of a song,

Were profanation.

Thou dost make the soul

A wondering witness of thy majesty ;

And while it rushes with delirious joy

To tread thy vestibule, dost chain its step,
And check its rapture with the humbling view
Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand
In the dread presence of the Invisible,
As if to answer to its God through thee.

- MRS. SIGOURNEY.

THE FALLS OF NIAGARA

1. 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
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Savior's sake

“The sound of many waters," and had bid

Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,

And notch His centuries in the eternal rocks.

2. Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we
That hear the question of that voice sublime?
Oh, what are all the notes that ever rang
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?
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.

- BRAINARD.

II. THE SEA AND ITS USES

I. It is a common thing in speaking of the sea to call it

a waste of waters." But this is a mistake. Instead of being a waste and a desert, it keeps the earth itself from becoming a waste and a desert. It is the world's fountain of life and health and beauty, and if it were taken away, the grass would perish from the mountains, the forests would crumble on the hills. Water is as indispensable to all life, vegetable or animal, as the air itself. This element of water is supplied entirely by the sea. The sea is the great inexhaustible fountain which is continually pouring up into the sky precisely as many streams, and as large, as all the rivers of the world are pouring into the sea.

2. The sea is the real birthplace of the clouds and the rivers, and out of it come all the rains and dews of heaven. Instead of being a waste and an incumbrance, therefore, it is a vast fountain of fruitfulness, and the nurse and