Ah there ! Niagara ! Again I’m here,
I, Fowler, the tuneful tenor-poet
Of Port Jervis, who just a year
Ago did visit thee and afterward let
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡all the wide world know it !
Niagara ! Thou art a Jim-dandy !
Niagara ! Thou art a Jim-daisy !
Thou enthusest me like brandy
Saturated with macerated rock candy.
(Which, when traveling, always comes in
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡mighty toothsome and palatesome and
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡stomachsome as well as hygenically
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡handy !)
Thou drives me nearly crazy
With gruesome delight.
Hail, hilarious sight !
What a grand dynamic,
Panoramic,
Diaphramic,
Dioramic,
Roaring,
Pouring,
Emerald frolic,
Cosmoramic,
Colic
Thou art !
Great Scott !
This glorious spot
Fills my heart
With dithyrambic,
Trochaic, iambic
Measures
And sesquipedalian treasures
Of poeticalized pleasures
That would knock the ancient poets limp and cold,
But emotions like mine in ordinary language can never be satisfactorily told!
Ah there ! Niagara !
Thou art a staggerer !
Thou sluggest all other earthly scenes, maudlin and silly !
Thou makest a man a poet, willy-nilly !
Thou despumatory
Fulminatory,
Thou.
How
Cam a man, who only dust is,
Do thee justice ?
Thou fallest. bawlest, squallest, callest
To me with a willowy whoop of roars,
And thy misty beard on the breeze to the zenith soars!
I am an emphatic
Niagaratic !
Like the wingful, flysome gull o’er thy curling crest I’d soar,
But not with the cranks in a cask down thy Horseshoe plunge I’d pour !
O no !
I’m not built THAT way !
I do my raving on terra firmay !
Quite so !
Ah there ! Terrapin Point I see,
So named because right there thee terror pins the tourist’s trembling knee!
August Niagara ! The pun excuse !
But surely, thou dost me so enthuse
That scarce I know
If, sitting down, I stand, or standing still as
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Stock or stone I swiftly onward, roundward go !
But now, Niagara, my time is up, my pass is
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡out, the walking’s bad twixt here and
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡P. J., my credit’s poor among these
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Canucks who glower on me, and these
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Fierce heesmen who look, wise laws,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡like sat-down-upon criminals, and I
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡must say more adieu ! Adieu ! Adieu !
Next year I’ll try again to come and visit yieu !
Source: Tri-States Union, December 29, 1887
Click to see the accompanying newspaper article about the visit Fowler made to Niagara Falls.