Music — Poetry — Fiction 



1834 



SlGOURNEY, Mrs. LYDIA H. Farewell to Niagara. (In Barham, 1834 

 William, Descriptions of Niagara; selected from various travellers. . . . Sigouniejr 

 Gravesend: n. d. Pp. 179-180.) 



My spirit grieves to say, Farewell to thee, 

 Ch beautiful and glorious! 



Thou dost robe 

 Thyself in mantle of the coloured mist, 

 Most lightly tinged, and exquisite as thought, 

 Decking thy forehead with a crown of gems 

 Woven by God's right hand. 



Hadst thou but wrapped 

 Thy brow in clouds, and swept the blinding mist 

 In showers upon us, it had been less hard 

 To part from thee. But there thou art, sublime 

 In noon-day splendour, gathering all thy rays 

 Unto their climax, green, and fleecy white, 

 And changeful tincture, for which words of man 

 Have neither sign nor sound, until to breathe 

 Farewell is agony. For we have roamed 

 Beside thee, at our will, and drawn thy voice 

 Into our secret soul, and felt how good 

 Thus to be here, until we half implored, 

 While long in wildering ecstasy we gazed, 

 To build us tabernacles, and behold 

 Always thy majesty. 



Fain would we dwell 

 Here at thy feet, and be thy worshipper, 

 And from the weariness and dust of earth 

 Steal evermore away. Yea, were it not 

 That many a care doth bind us here below, 

 And in each care, a duty, like a flower, 

 Thorn-hedged, perchance, yet fed with dews of heaven, 

 And in each duty, an enclosed joy, 

 Which like a honey-searching bee doth sing, — 

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