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
This poem was not received favourably by all readers. In the Cincinnati Mirror a review was published by “G,” presumably the editor William Davis Gallagher. The tone of this review is set in the first sentence: “Upon what principle this production is called a poem, we have not been able to determine” and grudgingly continues “It is true, that it contains occasional good similes, and is not destitute of poetic imagery; and moreover, has one quality of the sublime—being sometimes eminently obscure.”
I’ve added this review in the pictures below, and also added it to this poem’s page on the website (link above).
I invite you to take some time, read the poem and then the review, and decide if G was perhaps a little harsh or right on.
Part of Niagara Falls on the U.S. side of the river, seen from the Canada side Drawn June 1806 by D. Wadsworth, from nature Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Roar, raging torrent—and thou mighty river
Dash thy white waves on the valley below ;
Frown, ye dark mountains, and shadow for ever
The deep rocky bed where the rude rapids flow.
The green sunny glade and the smooth flowing fountains,
Brighten the home of the coward and slave,
The flood and the forest, the rock and the mountain,
Rear on their bosom the free and the brave.
While pours thy broad wave like a torrent from heaven,
Each son thou shalt rear in the battle’s wild shock,
When the death speaking blast of the trumpet is given,
Shall charge like thy waters, or stand like thy rocks ;
Though his roof be the clouds, and the ground be his pillow—
Though he stride the rough mountain or toss on the foam,
He will strike fast and well on the field or the billow,
In triumph Columbia !—for God and his home.
Source: The Albion. June 6, 1835. Signed H. Clinch, Esq.
This poem is almost identical to the first and last (6th) stanzas of the poem Niagara by Joseph Rodman Drake
Also published with minor changes in: The Southern Warbler: A New Collection. Charleston: Babcock & Co., 1845 and in Songs of Ireland and Other Lands. New York: D. & J. Sadlier, 1847
Distant View Of Niagara Falls by Thomas Cole, 1830 Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Softly the light in these umbrageous realms
Falls on the path, and plays upon the leaf —
Softly the breeze now whispering steals between
The thousand pillars of the quiet wood —
And we with gentle musings, and fond thoughts
Untroubled, free, pursue our pleasant way —
What sound is that careering on the wings
Of stormy blasts, so mightily and fills
The lofty arches of the forest wide ?
Is it the clamor of impetuous winds
That strive for egress from some rock-bound cave ?
Or is an earthquake waking from its wrath
And from the high unstable mountain tops
Hurling the ponderous and rebounding rocks ?
No! tis Niagara shouts from the abyss
Where headlong he has cast him in his might !
And rocks, and woods, and the astounded air,
And earth’s deep center tremble as with fear —
Approach and view the wonder of a world
See ! when the waters of a hundred lakes
An unheaped multitude tumultuous leap
O’er the projecting crags, into the gulf —
Thence the thick mist perpetual ascends,
In cloudy piles into the sky and hides,
The quivering torment of the floods below —
Like steam emitted from some cauldron vast
Vexed by furious and unquenching fires —
Thou consummation of the earth’s sublime !
Thy course nor time, nor tide, nor change hath stemmed !
Thy voice hath risen above the tempest’s roar
Year after year till countless they are grown —
Seasons have looked upon thee and have died —
Ages have vanish’d and the earth grown old —
Man who hath moved mountains, bound the sea,
Awe-struck recoils and works on thee no change
The earth hath much of beauty but the choice
Is garlanded around thine august brows —
Yon, flaky foam is white as alpine snow —
Yon gushing emerald clear as ocean’s depths —
The bow of promise sits on sable clouds ;
But lo ! a far excelling iris girds
The dazzling splendour of thy snowy breast—
Ages untold thy voice broke forth unheard ;
But by the shrinking wolf, or the tim’rous deer
Or wandering savage of the echoing wild —
Until an enterprise sublime unbarred
The mighty portals of the golden west
And midst its teeming fulness thou wast found
Majestic in the wilderness enthroned —
Written at the Falls May, 1829
Thomas Cole visited Niagara for the first time just before his departure to England in June 1829.
Source: Thomas Cole. Thomas Cole’s Poetry. comp. & ed. by Marshall B. Tymn. York, PA : Liberty Cap Books, 1972.
Source: Chester E. Pond. The Falls of Niagara Our School of Sublimity. Topeka, Kansas, 1888. Cover title: The Sublime Niagara of Our World.
N.B. This poem comes after a series of lessons by Pond about Niagara Falls, as “Thoughtful persons visit the Falls not so much for temporary pleasure as for permanent soul culture. Not simply to be able to say, “I have seen the great Niagara,” but to become better acquainted with Niagara’s great Creator.
The small railway hotel and tavern near the Rainbow Bridge of Niagara Falls, Ontario at Bridge St. and Erie St. was named seven times during its 125-year history.
For decades, the hotel was known for basic rooms, meals, stabling horses, and postal delivery.
Since its inception, the building had been called the Suspension Bridge (1853), the Waverly (1880s-90s), the Arlington (mid-1890s), the New Arlington (mid-1930s) the Erie Hotel and the Avon House (1950s), and, finally, the hotel was named the Klondike Hotel in 1960.
On the rough side of town, it became well known that, for regular, law-abiding folk, just going there was risky.
Over the years, there were constant law enforcement interventions about alcohol, drug, health, solicitation, strip club, and vice regulations.
There were continuous police citations for a myriad of recidivist by-law and civil infractions and criminal code violations.
Lawlessness prevailed, and the characters around the scene acted with impunity;
The Klondike had become a well-known bane to the civilized community.
One day, while I was researching the interesting landowner lineage of the plot at Sam’s Montrose Hotel/Motel at Montrose and Lyons Creek roads in Niagara Falls (my research paper found at Niagara Falls Museum in the Thompson/Thomson files collection),
I was in a public telephone booth calling the hotel for deed information, and I became a part of a peculiar telephone call misconnection.
I was confusedly speaking with a confused woman who was also telephoning Sam’s Montrose. I asked her name. She said her name was Cinnamon. Dare I say that I don’t know how she spelled her name.
Curious, I asked her where she was calling from. She replied, “the Klondike.” She added that she was working there. Intrigued, I felt a song coming on. I asked if I could meet her at the Klondike to talk person-to-person for ten to fifteen minutes, so I could take some notes. Honestly, that was my aim.
I went down to the Klondike to chat with this muse. As I walked through the door, facing me — three feet in front of me, on a raised runway stage — there was a full-frontal nude exotic dancer called Bambi. She was gyrating to Stevie Wonder’s major hit “Sir Duke.” As I stood before her, she opened her arms wide and shimmied. I heard the blasting lyrics, “You can feel it all over, you can feel it all over, you can feel it all over.” Believe me, I could feel it all over. The small lobby’s barroom was overcrowded, and marijuana and drunkenness were apparent. Bedlam reigned everywhere.
I briefly spoke with Cinnamon; she was so completely unimpressive that I took no notes. There was no song arising from this occasion. I quickly left, sensing the high tension in the thick, smoky air.
Everything about the Klondike festered until the hotel met its final fate.
Thank goodness no one was injured, but the building sustained a dynamite explosion in 1978.
One wonders why, over time, the police investigator
Never caught the perpetrator.
Rumors were that police facilitated the deed. The person(s) involved — never found.
Finally, in 1980, the officially condemned, unsafe building was demolished to the ground.
The land where The Klondike once stood is presently part of the Niagara Falls Ontario Bus Terminal site.
Today, word on the street is that, in the shadow of the Klondike area’s history, it’s not a neighborhood to walk through in the dim light of night.
Source: The author, 2026
Author’s note:
The poem “Klondike Hotel,” a Niagara Falls atypical rhyming piece is one of five ̶ what I call ‘rambling poems’ ̶ comprising the unpublished work Rambling Reminiscences.
Glenn Bridenbaker:
Happily married to beautiful and wise muse wife Cheryl since 1967. Two brilliant sons, a gorgeous daughter. Two glorious granddaughters, an excellent grandson. Ontario residences: Toronto, Manitoulin Island, Wikwemikong Unceded Indigenous Reserve, Niagara Falls, and Ridgeway. Bibliophile. Musician. Nonprofessional writer. Amateur oil and watercolor painting. Novice Oriental Brush Painting. Art collector. Musical instruments and recorded music collector. Numismatist and philatelist. Dog and cat owner. Home vegetable, flower, and landscape gardener. Birdwatcher. Astronomy and space aficionado. Meaningful values include: know thyself, family, health, common sense, truth, logic, integrity, sharing, creativity, curiosity, quality, arts appreciation, and humor. Two years graduate student of Marshall McLuhan at the Centre for Culture and Technology.
