ing like a steed--
A tameless steed with mane of flying spray--
Between the pillars rising sheer above.
But mark how soft its clamor now is grown,
Incessant rush like that of vernal groves
When, like some sweet surprise, a wand'ring wind,
Precursor of the coming rain, rides down
From a gray cloud and sets their leafy tongues
A-gabbing of the fresh, impending shower.

There runs the dam, and where its dark line cuts
The river's sheen, already you may see
The ripples glancing to the fervid sun,
As if the waves had couched a hundred spears
And tossed a hundred plumes of fleecy foam
In answer to the challenge of the Falls,
Blown on his bugle from the battlements
Of his subaqueous city's rocky walls.
And now you see their maddened coursers charge,
Hear wavy hoof-strokes on the jagged stones,
That pave the pathway of the current, beat,
While billowing they ride to ringing lists,
With shout and yell, and toss their hundred plumes,
And shock their riply spears in tournament
Upon the opposing billows' shining shields.
Now sinks a pennon, but 'tis raised again;
There falls or breaks a spear or sparkling sword;
A shattered helmet flies in flakes of foam
And on the frightened wind hisses away:
And o'er it all you hear the sound, the roar
Of waves that fall in onset or that strive.

On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop!
On, on, along the sandy banks that fling
Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay
The riotous waves that ride and hurl along
In casque and shield and wind their wat'ry horns.

And there where thousand oily eddies whirl,
And turn and turn like busy wheels of steel,
Is the Big Eddy, whose deep bottom none
As yet have felt with sounding plummet-line.
Like a huge giant, wily in its strength,
The Eddy lies; and bending from the shore
The spotted sycamores have looked and looked,
Watching his motions as a school boy might
A sleeping serpent coiled upon his path.
So long they've watched that their old backs have grown
Hump'd, gnarl'd, and crooked, nor seem they this to heed,
But gaze and gaze, and from the glossy waves
Their images stare back their wonderment.
Mayhap they've seen the guardian Genius lie
At its dark bottom in an oozy cave
Of shattered rock, recumbent on his mace
Of mineral; his locks of