After I found it permanent, I returned
many times to watch the play of its crest. In the little waterfall
beyond, nature seems, as she often does, to have made a study for some
larger design. She delights in this,--a sketch within a sketch, a dream
within a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in
the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the flowers
that star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineaments
become fluent, and we mould the scene in congenial thought with its
genius.
People complain of the buildings at Niagara, and fear to see it further
deformed. I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension: the spectacle
is capable to swallow up all such objects; they are not seen in the
great whole, more than an earthworm in a wide field.
The beautiful wood on Goat Island is full of flowers; many of the
fairest love to do homage here. The Wake Robin and May Apple are in
bloom now; the former, white, pink, green, purple, copying the rainbow
of the fall, and fit to make a garland for its presiding deity when he
walks the land, for they are of imperial size, and shaped like stones
for a diadem. Of the May Apple, I did not raise one green tent without
finding a flower beneath.
And now farewell, Niagara. I have seen thee, and I think all who come
here must in some sort see thee; thou art not to be got rid of as easily
as the stars. I will be here again beneath some flooding July moon and
sun.
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