Oft, when hoar and silvery flakes
Melt along the ruffled lakes ;
When the grey moose sheds his horns,
When the track, at evening, warns
Weary hunters of the way
To the wigwam’s cheering ray,
Then, aloft through freezing air,
With the snow–bird1 soft and fair
As the fleece that heaven flings
O’er his little pearly wings,
Light above the rocks I play,
Where Niagara’s starry spray,
Frozen on the cliff, appears
Like a giant’s starting tears !
There, amid the island-sedge,
Just upon the cataract’s edge,
Where the foot of living man
Never trod, since time began,
Lone I sit, at close of day,
While, beneath the golden ray,
Icy columns gleam below,
Feather’d round with falling snow,
And an arch of glory springs,
Brilliant as the chain of rings
Round the neck of virgins hung,
Virgins,2 who have wander’d young
O’er the waters of the west
To the land where spirits rest !
Source: Thomas Moore. Epistles, Odes and Other Poems. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Published by John Watts, 1806. This is the short Niagara selection from Epistle IX: To the Lady Charlotte Rawdon From the Banks of the St. Lawrence.
- Emberiza hyemalis [the obsolete scientific name for the dark-eyed junco]
- Lafitau wishes to believe , for the sake of his theory , that there was an order of vestals established among the Iroquois Indians ; but I am afraid that Jaques Carthier , upon whose authority he supports himself , meant any thing but vestal institutions by the “cabanes publiques,“ which he met with at Montreal . See Lafitau , Mœurs des Sauvages Americains , & c . Tom . i , p . 173 .
Moore visited Niagara in July 1804, but didn’t write a poem about the Falls, because, of his conviction that “Niagara Falls defy description or depiction: “It is impossible by pen or pencil to convey even a faint idea of their magnificence. Painting is lifeless; and the most burning words of poetry have all been lavished upon inferior and ordinary subjects. We must have new combinations of language to describe the Falls of Niagara” (Letters, I, 77).” D.M.R. Bentley. Thomas Moore in Canada and Canadian Poetry