Smooth to the shelving brink a copious flood <br />Rolls fair and placid: where collected all, <br />In one impetuous torrent down the steep <br />It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round. <br />At first, an azure sheet, it rushes broad; <br />Then whitening by degrees, as prone it falls, <br />And from the loud-resounding rocks below, <br />Dash'd in a cloud of foam, it sends aloft <br />A hoary mist, and forms a ceaseless shower. <br />Nor can the tortured wave here find repose: <br />But, raging still amid the shaggy rocks, <br />Now flashes o'er the scatter'd fragments, now <br />Aslant the hollow channel rapid darts; <br />And falling fast from gradual slope to slope, <br />With wild infracted course, and lessen'd roar, <br />It gains a safer bed, and steals, at last, <br />Along the mazes of a quiet vale.<br /><br />James Thomson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/waterfall-29/
