Waterfall

Smooth to the shelving brink a copious flood

Rolls fair and placid: where collected all,

In one impetuous torrent down the steep

It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round.

At first, an azure sheet, it rushes broad;

Then whitening by degrees, as prone it falls,

And from the loud-resounding rocks below,

Dash'd in a cloud of foam, it sends aloft

A hoary mist, and forms a ceaseless shower.

Nor can the tortured wave here find repose:

But, raging still amid the shaggy rocks,

Now flashes o'er the scatter'd fragments, now

Aslant the hollow channel rapid darts;

And falling fast from gradual slope to slope,

With wild infracted course, and lessen'd roar,

It gains a safer bed, and steals, at last,

Along the mazes of a quiet vale.