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."
The following lines were written by the late John G. C. Brainard, who never saw the Falls. They were dashed off at a single short sitting, for the head of the literary column of the Connecticut Mirror, of Hartford, which he then edited:
"THE FALLS OF NIAGARA.
"The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain
While I look upward to thee. It would seem
As if God pour'd thee from his 'hollow hand'
And hung his bow upon thine awful front,