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Charles Pelham Mulvany
(From the French of Louis Honoré Frechette)
Niagara
Majestic moves the mighty stream and slow,
Till from that false calm=s
semblance, suddenly,
Wild and with echoes shaking earth and sky,
The huge tide plunges in the abyss below,
-- It is the cataract! from
whose thunderous ire
The wild birds flee in terror far away B
From that dread gulf when with her scarf of fire
The rainbow sits above the torrent=s sway!
Earth quakes, for sudden that vast arching dome
Of green is changed to hills of snow-white foam,
That seethe and boil and bound in tameless pride.
Yet this Thy work, O God, Thy law fulfils,
And while it shakes the everlasting hills,
It spares the straw that floats upon its tide.
Rose-Belford=s Canadian Monthly and
National Review, July 1881, vol. 7, no. 1. Toronto: Rose-Belford Publishing Co.,
1881. p. 26
 
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