Stamp honouring Archibald Lampman, issued July 7, 1989
Heavy with haze that merges and melts free ‡‡Into the measureless depth on either hand, ‡‡The full day rests upon the luminous land
In one long noon of golden reverie.
Now hath the harvest come and gone with glee. ‡‡The shaven fields stretch smooth and clean away, ‡‡Purple and green, and yellow, and soft gray,
Chequered with orchards. Farther still I see
Towns and dim villages, whose roof-tops fill ‡‡The distant mist, yet scarcely catch the view.
Thorold set sultry on its plateau’d hill, ‡‡And far to westward, where yon pointed towers
Rise faint and ruddy from the vaporous blue, ‡‡Saint Catharines, city of the host of flowers.
Source: Lampman, Archibald. (ed. & with a memoir by Duncan Campbell Scott) The Poems of Archibald Lampman. Toronto; George N. Morang & Co., 1900.
The Lampman family homestead, originally known as Mountain Point, became the present day Woodland Conservation Area.
Through drifty silver smoke, that’s opalescent,
The soft-spun rainbows curve, each one a crescent
And we who stand, where once the hoary otter
Trailed sooty moles, behold the self-same water
And revel in the tender-tinted blur
That blows about this perpendicular
Descent these maiden-veils, so evanescent —
One feels the beautiful, our God, a-stir.
From dim concealment whips of color leap,
His many glories, powers, find voice and keep
The living spirit conscious of the deep.
The mind can pierce the past — the fragrant wood —
Each wild flower with its aureole, a snood,
In convents green that shield each sisterhood :
The tallish primrose in its shapely scone A candle for some barren place of stone. We see how driven drifts of spray can linger In opal moonlight, star-companioned : finger
The budding pine tree, tipped with emerald crosses, And underneath, the cool and long drenched mosses — We’ve touched the tarnished rocks and silver bosses : There seems no sadness — other songs malinger.
Again one sees a twisting vine, a rope Of wild growth twining on a footless slope, Men descending, English Lord, or cotter, To catch this very view of misting water. . . Upon our hands spilt dews, like some baptism To honor daily idylls, heroism ; And early Warriorswith their many nations Who gave their Mystic One their bright oblations Of fruit and flower and youth, like ancient Stoic — (Soul-courage may not deem itself heroic) —
And now we make ourselves our consecrations.
Within these organ-tones of color-thunder There tides to mind an old, yet-dim wonder : Man’s NOT the spider forever clambering down Old causeways where forbidding rocks shall frown, Nor yet the soldier with defiant plume. . . (How many phantoms in this dull-green gloom) — But here he stands so near the Farther Border
He finds in seeming chaos, love’s deep order, Serenity behind the cataclysm, The same sweet rainbow in each haunting prism — In all this welter, sheerest symmetry, And then beyond — God’s choice simplicity. Beyond the auric smoke and dazzling dews, Beyond these organ-tones that far diffuse Their song, there’s ever pierceless Mystery,
For far within Man finds himself and Thee.
But there’s more beauty than’s interpreted; (Beyond the song that’s heard, the song that’s hid,) And if there’s Immanence within the mists And Radiance where moon-gold weaves and twists Strange forms for eyes, there’s greater light within The heart of man and in the soul there’s been Implanted Truth — oh, so imperative — That we, in turn, are kin not fugitive As slaves, and not idolatrous, But His Beloved, who asks all love of us, As mists shall hide the waters from the sight This beauty-veil conceals, reveals, His Light.
Through drifty silver smoke, that’s opalescent,
The soft-spun rainbows curve, each one a crescent
And we, who stand where once the hoary otter
Trailed sooty moles, behold the self-same water
And revel in the tender-tinted blur
That blows about this perpendicular
Descent these maiden-veils, so evanescent
One feels the beautiful, our God, a-stir.
From dim concealment whips of color leap,
His many glories, powers, find voice and keep
The living spirit conscious of the Deep.
watson mist
Source: Evelyn M. Watson. Poems of the Niagara Frontier. New York: Dean & Company, 1929.
Early this Morning by Betty Ann Whitney was First Place winner of the
Sunrise Tank II, contest, subject: Sunrise at Niagara Falls, Houston
Chapter of the Poetry Society of Texas’s Thirty-First annual Winter
Poetry Festival
Betty Ann Whitney is Sol Magazine’s Poetry Editor. Her poetry and prose has appeared in anthologies, magazines, journals and other creative publications for over a decade. She has won numerous awards for her poetry. She was Sol Magazine’s first Poet Laureate in 1998, and became assistant editor for Sol in 1999, contributing monthly articles for the glossary and Sol’s “WRITE-NOW” column.
Whitney is a member of the Poetry Society of Texas, New River Poets & Writers, Florida State Poets Association and National Federation of State Poetry Societies.
Niagara Falls
majestic curtains
of surging water
cascading, never-ending,
onto the jagged rocks below.
Creating a roar,
like rolling thunder,
a tidal wave of sound
reverberating off the cliffs,
both powerful and soothing,
it can even lull a baby
to sleep.
And of course the mist,
floating high into the sky,
like plumes of gossamer silk,
meeting the rays of the sun,
forming radiant rainbows,
each a crescent of dazzling colors,
like a tiara of diamonds
adorning the royal head of
a noble queen.
For Niagara Falls
is nature’s gift to humanity:
her splendor unmatched,
her beauty sublime,
to be admired and treasured,
like a priceless gem,
for all times.
