Читать книгу Pieces People Ask For - George Melville Baker - Страница 17

Table of Contents

​

THE FALL.

"Down, down, down, ten thousand fathoms deep."—Count Fathom.

Who does not know that dreadful gulf, where Niagara falls,

Where eagle unto eagle screams, to vulture vulture calls;

Where down beneath, despair and death in liquid darkness grope,

And upward on the foam there shines a rainbow without hope?

While, hung with clouds of fear and doubt, the unreturning wave

Suddenly gives an awful plunge, like life into the grave;

And many a hapless mortal there hath dived to vale or bliss;

One—only one—hath ever lived to rise from that abyss!

O heaven! it turns me now to ice with chill of fear extreme,

To think of my frail bark adrift on that tumultuous stream !

In vain, with desperate sinews, strung by love of life and light,

I urged that coffin, my canoe, against the current's might;

On—on—still on—direct for doom, the river rushed in force,

And fearfully the stream of time raced with it in its course.

My eyes I closed I dared not look the way towards the goal;

But still I viewed the horrid close, and dreamt it in my soul.

Plainly, as through transparent lids, I saw the fleeting shore,

And lofty trees, like winged things, flit by forevermore!

​

Plainly—but with no prophet sense—I heard the sullen sound,

The torrent's voice—and felt the mist, like death-sweat, gathering round.

O agony! O life! My home, and those that made it sweet!

Ere I could pray, the torrent lay beneath my very feet.

With frightful whirl, more swift than thought, I passed the dizzy edge;

Bound after bound, with hideous bruise, I dashed from ledge to ledge,

From crag to crag—in speechless pain—from midnight deep to deep;

I did not die, but anguish stunned my senses into sleep.

How long entranced, or whither dived, no clew I have to find.

At last the gradual light of life came dawning o'er my mind;

And through my brain there thrilled a cry,—a cry as shrill as birds

Of vulture or of eagle kind, but this was set to words:—

"It's Edgar Huntley in his cap and nightgown, I declares!

He's been a-walking in his sleep, and pitched all down the stairs!"

Thomas Hood.