Poetry of and about Niagara Falls & the Niagara River – the waterfalls, the city, the history, the stunters, and everything else Niagara
Author: Andrew Porteus
Andrew Porteus is a retired librarian who started the Niagara Falls Poetry Project in 1998 in order to gather in one place the hundreds of poems that exist about Niagara Falls. Andrew returned to Brock University to get a Master of Art degree based on the website
Casino Niagara 2002. The Tower was formerly known as the Oneida Tower. Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
Amongst the vineyards
She sounds continuous tambourine loud celebration of sight drowning hell and giving heaven vacant space
We drive and drive around tourist inside his homeland Ontario viewing it first at 23 and now 5th visit at 26.
the seasons submerge forging unison
Here the beauty female is born as we stare snap photos and take chances on the betting machines
Each day it pulls the provinces closer together drawing strangers to drive and stand and glare at this bowl of white mist with a playing marching band hidden below it all
Spanish Aero-Car (photo courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library)
Had Dante ever seen this prodigy,
This monstrous monument of Nature's wrath,
Then had he found new terrors to surround
The entrance to Inferno. At the gate
A power invisible becomes our guide,
And our smooth car swings into the Abime.
The evening shades have fallen and a cloud,
Huge, threatening, and amorphous settles down,
Bridging the gulf. Lo! now assails our ears,
The hissing tumult of the floods that dash,
Writhing in agony, 'twixt iron walls,
O'er rude and tortuous beds!
The uproar grows,
And the pent waters churning into foam,
Round adamantine boulders, scream aloud,
Till maddened past all bound, they end the note
In maniac glee!
Above and all about,
Colossal cliffs their lithic brows uplift,
To the grim skies, and horror reigns supreme!
"Release!" "Release!" the torn waves howl beneath --
"Give us release!" -- and the harsh cliffs reply,
With mocking echoes -- their eroded breasts,
Gargantuan laughter shakes.
And now our car
Leaves the dread scene, and up the wall's sheer side,
Climbs, groaning with vast effort, till we view,
From perilous height the black gulf far below,
And quake to ponder plunging down so steep,
To dire destruction!
All at once there opes
A rocky portal, and we breathe relief,
For, lo! the streets, the windows, and the lights!
The newsboys' cries, the clatter of the town!
Source: Rev. James B. Dollard. Poems. Toronto: The Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada, 1910.
Incessantly thy waters thus have rolled
Through the dim aeons of unmeasured Time,
While God was fashioning His work sublime,
Or ere His sulphurous forges could grow cold!
When Egypt loved Osiris and retold
His charmed birth from out Nilotic slime,
When Chaldea read the stars, and Homer's rhyme
Was yet undreamt -- Niagara thundered bold.
So night and day throughout coverging years
Hoarse voices rose above the hissing spray
Scaring the lonely Indian on the shore!
These bellowing chasms harbored nameless fears --
Demons and dragons in contorted play
Lashing the frightened waters evermore!
Source: Rev. James B. Dollard. Poems. Toronto: The Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada, 1910.
loretto
I look below; Niagara’s torrent white
Is eager hurrying to the dread abyss;
I hear its thunder as the waters hiss
Over the awful brink, to plunge from sight
In seething spray! Confusion at its height
Is pictured there; but even on convent walls
The radiant glow of even gently falls
And all is harmony and holy quiet!
Like some blest soul on Heaven that ever dreams,
Bending its chastened look beyond the skies,
Regardless of the tumults of the world;
So, crowned with peace this cloistered abbey seems,
And on its peerless heights serene doth rise,
While deep below the raging floods are hurled!
Source: Rev. James B. Dollard. Poems. Toronto: The Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada, 1910.
Also in the anthology Niagara Mornings by Andrew C. Porteus, 2016.
In old Niagara town, long aisles of ancient trees
Stand sentinel along the storied ways,
Tall, sturdy patriarchs of other days,
Whose busy leaves are ever whispering memories.
And one there was who walked beneath their arching shade:
True, gallant type of Christian gentleman,
He, faithful, passed the full, allotted span
Within this hoary town whose cause his own he made;
And always at his side there moved a shadowy throng:
Simcoe and Brock and noble Addison,
All who with axe and plough and sword and gun,
Laid firm its deep foundations that have lasted long,
All who, sojourning in this place, did love it well.
He was like to the Roman Livy, he
Who loved his town and ever strove to be
Worthy its great traditions and its annals tell.
So let his country keep his memory one pure sheen,
And bring him, there beside the ivied wall,
Beneath still other forest-veterans tall,
French whites and English roses, ‘twined with Maple green.
Source: E.J. Pratt, (ed). Canadian Poetry Magazine. vol. 6, no. 1, December 1941.
Biographical information on George ‘Fisher’ Davidson prepared by historian Arden Phair:
George ‘Fisher’ Davidson was born in Batavia, NY, October 19, 1912, the son of George Lee Davidson and Florence Irene Fisher. The family left the United States on February 27, 1918 and settled in Grantham Township where they took up farming. Fisher’s father died in October 1926 and his brother in February 1929. By March 1929, Fisher and his mother are living in Welland. After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1935, he returned to Welland where he was a teacher, remaining there until at least 1940. In 1947 he was in Hornepayne, Ontario, then is found in Toronto in 1948, residing there until at least 1961. In the 1950s, his employment in Toronto is listed as “customs.” Davidson apparently died in Hamilton, January 19, 1995, though no official record of the details of this event can as yet be located (either in Hamilton, Welland, or elsewhere).
George ‘Fisher Davidson, Class of ’35, University College Torontonensis
In high school, he was acknowledged as an accomplished orator, reaching the Ontario District semi-finals in 1929. Ten years later, he was playwright for “The Canal”, a production whose focus is on a Canal widow at the 1932 Official Opening of the waterway. Her story is told as she reflects upon the tragedies that led up to the day’s events. His original play was performed by members of the Anglican Young Peoples Association (A.Y.P.A.) of Trinity Anglican Church in Welland. In January 1939, the play was awarded The Lewis Cup as the best of six plays at the A.Y.P.A. Niagara District Drama Festival.
Davidson had poems and short stories published in a variety of journals and newspapers including the Canadian Historical Association Annual Report, Canadian Poetry Magazine, Canadian Forum, and The Globe/Globe & Mail. He was also a member of the Toronto branch of the Canadian Authors Association.
Fisher Davidson’s published works include: Two Sonnets for a Centenary (ca. 1939), Dominion and Other Poems: 1948), Principal Boy (1954), and Mists of Quebec (1960).
