An Ode to Niagara Falls by
HONORABLE HENRY TAYLOR BLAKE
NOW IN HIS SEVENTY – NINTH YEAR
Like him of Patmos who in vision rapt
Beheld in Heaven Jehovah’s great white throne
And speechless worshipped, thus with reverent awe
Before thy royal state I bow, Niagara !
Monarch supreme in Nature’s glorious realms
Of Beauty, Grandeur, Majesty and Power !
Monarch and psalmist both ! whose mighty harp
Like that of Israel’s King, with vibrant strings
Repeats in chant sublime thy Maker’s name.
Fit music for this wondrous amphitheater
Whose pageants God’s own hand has framed and moves
Incessant through the years in pomp divine !
Draped from the wide arena’s farther wall,
Yon streaming curtain shows in living scene
A sliding, shimmering precipice of foam
Half veiled in rolling clouds of bursting spray,
Whose gullied front with changing hues aglow
And glimpsed in gleams of fitful splendor, seems
An endless avalanche of emerald and snow ;
Or like a marble mountain’s beetling cliff,
Its tumbling crags in dusty ruin hurled ;
While like a dirge in varying cadence floats
Across the misty gulf, their deep despairing roar.
Turning I downward peer with shuddering gaze
Over the plunging cataract’s dizzy verge,
Stunned by the throbbing thunder–roll below,
Where Hell’s infuriate cauldron boils and spouts
And quivers with the throes of bellowing floods
In that fierce torture-dungeon pent and torn !
Their writhing ghosts, out from the vortex flung
Bewildered whirl ; then some in somber train
Like spirits lost, flit weeping : some with joyous flight
Swift through the golden archway overspread
Like radiant portal of immortal hope
Upsoaring, vanish at the gate of heaven.
Far up the stream in restless flashing line
Thy heaving waters meet the horizon’s edge.
Lo ! leaping from the sky in pauseless flow
Unnumbered billowy legions, rank on rank
In plumed array sweep down the tossing slope !
Onward they drive in eager, mad career !
They hear thy battle thundering at the front !
They see thy banner glittering o’er the fray,
And shout exulting ! but the foremost lines
When thy deep dread abyss yawns wide below
Shrink back appalled, recoiling from their fate !
Vain thought ! borne onward in impetuous course
Their loose battalions massed for final charge
Are headlong hurled to join the dreadful war
Where crashing its volleys on the mail clad rocks
Thy fierce artillery smokes in ceaseless peal !
Stupendous strife of Nature’s mightiest powers !
Resistless Force with Strength immovable !
But thine all shattering blows break piecemeal down
Those armored hosts and beat them into dust
And bear them backward in a murky tide ;
First, slow and sullen, then in frantic rout
And desperate race, pursuers and pursued
In wild commingling piled, with deafening roar
Down through that gloomy gorge where thou hast fought
Thy tireless battle of ten thousand years
Moving thy standard onward, inch by inch !
Slowly the turmoil dies ; the struggle ends ;
O’erwhelmed the vanquished sink, and the victorious hosts
With trampling rush above their fallen foes
Press on to reach the goal by glory won,
Death’s and Oblivion’s dank and turbid pool !
And now the setting sun’s departing beams
Light up thy face with warm responsive glow
As if thou answeredst back his kind “Good Night !”
And thus with fond attention hour by hour
Thy brow reflects his every changing mood ;
Bright when he smiles, and shadowed when he frowns,
But all things else thou heedest not, withdrawn
In solemn mystery apart, inscrutable ;
Speaking thy thunders to no earthly ear,
And tossing man or beast or floating log
Indifferent which, and all with equal scorn !
For he, thy sire, who warmed thee into life
Smiled the first welcome to thine infant form
When the great glacier mother gave thee birth
And scooped thy cradle in the solid rock,
Then dying, left thee to his fostering care,
And he and thou in lone companionship
Through æons vast together have beheld
The myriad changes of Creation’s growth ;
Seas, lakes and rivers, mountains, hills and plains,
Deserts and forests, reptiles and monsters strange,
Fierce beasts and fiercer men, race slaughtering race.
In long succession come and pass away ;
Thyself and he, the only deathless things !
And still his radiant orb undimmed shall light
Unnumbered generations to adore
At thine all-glorious shrine, all glorious still
Though marred by fripperies, and despoiled by greed,
While empires wax and wane and disappear.
Till Time’s tired footsteps drag but feebly on
And Earth decrepit staggers to her end !
Then shall his face grow wan with age and cold
And thy swift rushing torrents freeze to stone ;
And slowly mantling in the gloomy pall
Of Nature’s icy death-bed, thou and he
Shall sleep together in eternal night .
Source: The Journal of American History v.1, 1907, p. 141-142