Fall

“ With the shifting wind and the passing clouds the scene was in perpetual change; now the American Fall was creamy white, and the mist below dark, and again the heavy mass was gray and sullen, and the mist like silver spray. Perhaps nowhere else in the world is the force of nature so overpowering to the mind, and as the eye wanders from the chaos of the fall to the far horizon, where the vast rivers of rapids are poured out of the sky, one feels that this force is inexhaustible and eternal. ”

“ And on the roof the rain's unending harmonies?
For when could death be more desired by us
(Oh, follow, Death, I pray thee, with the Fall!)
Than when the night
Is heavy with the wet wind born of rain? ”

“ Deceiving; and men, horses, arms, fall in heaps, in confusion.
And see! Now the clouds, by an icy gale smitten, their burden
Discharge! Lo! the gusts of the whirlwind swirl fiercely about them;
The sky in convulsions, with swollen hail buffets them sorely. ”

“ They felt that spring was theirs too, as it was—glory as fair as brief—with promise as a beginning and storm and desolation as an ending; like two trees that put forth green leaves in the sunshine, only later to have them torn and destroyed, and they themselves fall stricken by the storm to earth. ”

“ That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar that renewed our woe.
And again to the child I whispered,
"The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!" ”

“ With shower and cloud and waterfall?
While yet the world's good heart is cheery,
Who knows if rains will ever brawl?
The storm thinks long, the winds wax weary,
Till winter comes to wind up all
From spring to fall. ”

“ The entire fall is above two hundred feet at one leap, over a dark rugged precipice, closed in on every side with sharp rocks, and suggesting to the mind ideas of much terror and sublimity. Attempts have been made to scale the face of the fall, occasionally with fatal results, and the imagination can create, even if the eyes cannot see, the fluttering of morsels of clothing that are pointed out by the guide as horrible memorials of such foolhardy attempts. ”

“ Far above the fall there is a cloud of spray from another fall, which the river makes before its grand and final plunge; this first fall is invisible from below. It was quite fascinating to watch the actual fall of the water; there is no grand rush or tremendous leap, it seems rather to slide over the edge of the precipice; all idea of weight is lost; it seems to be water spiritualised, and falls over in light and airy wreaths of snow, the edges of which break away into lighter and airier wreaths of foam. ”

“ Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,—the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall. ”

“ A fall meant death, and many a time their hearts stood still, as the intrepid lad placed his foot on a dead branch only to have it break under him, or reached for a limb to find it give way at his touch. ”

“ And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men. ”

“ And the fog, and the rain,
By the late fall are brought,
Men are wearied, men are grieved,
But birdie flies into distant lands,
Into warm climes, beyond the blue sea:
Flies away until the spring. ”

“ For there is hidden there a beautiful fall, with its source far away in front of you in those great snow fields; in one place having a perpendicular descent of fifty feet or more, and in another dashing and tumbling down its precipitous bed over huge boulders for hundreds of feet, like a great artery pouring crystal life and beauty into the little queen below. ”

“ Strange laughter, and the unhealing wound of death.
These in the world, all these, have come upon me,
Leaving me mute and shaken with surprise.
Oh, turn them in your measureless contemplation,
And in their mastery teach me to be wise.
67
The Falling Leaves
Lightly He blows, and at His breath they fall,
The perishing kindreds of the leaves; they drift,
Spent flames of scarlet, gold aerial,
Across the hollow year, noiseless and swift. ”

“ The first object the eye rests upon, or rather is fascinated by, in the very centre of the picture is the fall itself, before which are two enormous barriers of steep, jagged, black rocks, forming a natural gateway to the fall. Over these, centuries ago, the water must have come; gradually, little by little, year after year, the irresistible rushing water has worn away those iron rocks into their present form. All the lower part of the fall is completely hidden in rolling clouds of spray, which rise far above the top. ”

“ Men fall, tossing their arms; some leap into the air, some plunge headlong, falling like logs of wood or lumps of lead. Some reel, stagger, and tumble; others lie down gently as to a night’s repose, unheeding the din, commotion, and uproar. ”

“ Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary. ”

“ The duly measured fall of winter’s rain, the rolling thunder, the lightning’s flash, the eddying currents of the winds, and the airy courses of the clouds, all reveal his presence to those to whom his Person is invisible. ”

“ When the day is gloomy, the water falls like snow, or sometimes it seems to crumble away like the face of a great chalk cliff, or sometimes again to roll along the front of the rock like white smoke. But it all seems gay or gloomy, dark or light, by sun or moon. From the bottom of both Falls, there is always rising up a solemn ghostly cloud, which hides the boiling cauldron from human sight, and makes it in its mystery a hundred times more grand than if you could see all the secrets that lie hidden in its tremendous depth. One Fall is as close to us as York Gate is to No. ”

“ But on the mountains nothing moves at night. There even stones do not fall; there are no thunders of avalanches; no sudden and awful crash of an ice-fall. Even when the sun is hot and the mountains waken a little these motions seem accidents. ”

“ Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day. ”

“ With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall. ”

“ The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain,
One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken.
THE SEA-REAPERS When the Four Winds, the Wrestlers, strive with the Sun,
When the Sun is slain in the dark ”

“ The term Fall we use metaphorically, to signify degradation: literally, it signifies stumbling, so as to lose the centre of gravity, or the proper poise of our bodies, in consequence of which we are precipitated on the ground. ”

“ But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer. ”

“ I wonder why the wind, even the wind doth seem
To mock me now, all night, all night, and
Have I strayed among the cliffs here
They say, some day I'll fall
Down through the sea-bit fissures, and no more
Know the warm cloak of sun, or bathe
The dew across my tired eyes to comfort them.
They try to keep me hid within four walls.
I will not stay! ”

“ A turn or a detour to survey the vicinity and attempt to get one's bearings almost invariably brings disaster. A fall that dazes one even for a few minutes is liable to befuddle one as to direction and cause one to lose one's way. ”

“ The middle fall of four hundred feet, is entirely hid from the sight, and such is the immense height of the whole, that the space occupied by this middle fall seems dwindled to a few feet, and the spectator can scarcely realize that such a fall does, indeed, exist. ”

“ As they sat by the fire waiting, they could hear the frost cracking and snapping the tree-boughs. Now and then a crash like thunder came. It was a limb, overloaded with ice, breaking off, and falling to the ground. And by and by, among the other noises, a strange, wild voice began to mingle, making them all more fearful. ”

“ The wind was often so violent in these regions, that its velocity dazzled the sight, while our fears were increased by the dreadful concussions of the precipice, and by the fall of enormous fragments of rocks. ”

“ And when the times are dreariest, and frost binds the ground, we shall say, 'If winter comes, can spring be far behind?' The times roll over us, like the seas that break upon some isolated rock, and when the tide has fallen and the vain flood has subsided, the rock is there. ”

“ The clouds of spray which are always rising from these stupendous falls, are speedily congealed during the winter, and settle on the neighbouring trees, casing the trunks with coats of ice, and hanging the branches with a thousand icicles. ”

“ They have often found below the fall, fragments of human bodies, that have unhappily been precipitated over the fall. The French say, that they have often thrown great trees into the water above, to see them carried over this precipice with the vast body of water, which nothing can resist: these go down with surprising swiftness, but can never be seen afterwards; from whence has arisen the conjecture that there was a bottomless abyss just under the fall. ”

“ The suddenness of the break, over which the cascade tumbles, leads many an innocent victim to a painful termination of its existence, and the gloomy character of the picture is generally increased by the shattered remains of some poor animal numbered amongst the rocks at the foot of the great fall. ”

“ Many who can remember that mighty fall of snow, exceeding aught in the recollection of the oldest inhabitant, and the time during which the frost kept it on the earth, will be able and willing to fix the date. ”

“ When one of the fissured masses falls there is first a heavy, plunging crash, then a deep, deliberate, long-drawn-out thundering roar, followed by clashing, grating sounds from the agitated bergs set in motion by the new arrival, and the swash of waves along the beach. ”

“ A person slipping here would, of course, accomplish portions of the descent on mere empty air. The trouble was not so much in getting through the air as in bringing up after going through. A fall never hurts anybody. ”

“ There are wails in the wind, there are sighs on the shores,
⁠And alas, for the fate of a storm-beaten man!
Oh, dark falls the night on the rain-rutted verge,
⁠So sad with the sound of the foam!
Oh, wild is the sweep and the swirl of the surge ”

“ Rather we picture to ourselves the scene as it may have been witnessed by a belated wayfarer on one of those wild autumn nights when the dead leaves are falling thick, and the winds seem to sing the dirge of the dying year. ”

“ We stumbled and fell, rose and fell again, our capes spreading out like wings and our rifles falling in the mud. The sight of a man or woman falling always makes me laugh. I laughed as I fell, as Stoner fell, as Mervin, Goliath, Bill, or Pryor fell. ”

“ The hoarse dash of the waves, the shrill scream of the stormy petrel, the crash of some disjointed and falling rock, or the whistling of the coming tempest, are almost the only sounds that now alternate among these embattled heights, where the curious stranger retraces with melancholy interest the days and deeds of antiquity. ”

“ On the instant there came a crackling, tearing sound—a heaving roll—a splintering crash and uproar. The man aloft was seen to make a flying leap—or was it only a hurled fragment of the falling chimney?—and white dust rose in a fog once more and blotted out all the tragedy that might be enacting behind it. ”

“ When we come to sketch in words the rare and weird effects, the storm, the sunsets that seem not of earth, the cascade, or the ravage of the "windfall," it is wise not to be lured into fanciful word-painting, and the temptation is large. ”

“ Now in the silent downfall of snow, now in the drift and whirl of flakes driven from the sky and tossed from the earth by the shrieking wind, the day's passage is unmarked by shadows. It is but a long twilight, coming upon the world out of one misty gloom, and going from it into another. ”

“ Once, when the sky was young and the spirits were expressing their wishes, peals of light and thunder damaged the heavens until they were swollen and purple. Rain fell like leaves as the victors banished the fallen from the clouds. ”

“ With them, being tree-dwellers, the liability of falling was an ever-present menace. Many lost their lives that way; all of them experienced terrible falls, saving themselves by clutching branches as they fell toward the ground. ”