The lean wolf laps my flow;
In my pointed pools below,
The grand gray eagle’s tawny eye like lightning fires the gloom.
Not oft is the warbling bird
In my jagged cradle heard,
For I am the child of the savage and wild, not pet of the sun and bloom.
I smite, in headlong shocks,
Roots clutching the ragged rocks,
And the blocks of my sable basins and the chasms my fury ploughs,
Where the raven, as o’er he flies,
Sees the frown of his deepest dyes,
As the murkiest pall of the forest is flung from the dungeon-boughs.
Old Whiteface cleaves apart
In dizziest heights his heart
For the roll of my rocky waters, and I lighten and thunder through.
And sometimes I tame my will
To sing like the wren-like rill,
And I mirror the flower and bending bower and laugh in the open blue.
But sometimes the cataract-rain
Fills my breast with frantic disdain,
And my boiling deep shoots torrent-like, lashing and crashing past;—
Whole forests I tear in my wrath;
Whole hamlets I strew on my’ path,
Till my wild waves break upon the lake, and I slumber in peace at last.
BUTTERMILK FALLS.
Racket River.
Where thick o’er the panther ledges
Its crescents the fir-tree curls,
And the rough yellow pine hangs frowning,
The river its cataract hurls.
Threading in darkness the forest
It bursts into light at the spring,
And it shouts to the hovering eagle,
“Ho, ho! I am free as thy wing!
Shriek, blend thy brave tones to my shouting
As down my bright garlands I fling!”