Category: Niagara Falls Poems

Niagara by Vachel Lindsay (Chinese Nightingale Version)

niagara vachel lindsay
Vachel Lindsay in 1928

    I

Within the town of Buffalo
Are prosy men with leaden eyes.
Like ants they worry to and fro
(Important men in Buffalo).
But only twenty miles away
A deathless glory is at play:
Niagara, Niagara.

The women buy their lace and cry: —
“O such a delicate design,”
And over ostrich feathers sigh,
By counters there, in Buffalo.
The children haunt the trinket shops,
They buy false-faces, bells, and tops,
Forgetting great Niagara.

Within the town of Buffalo
Are stores with garnets, sapphires, pearls,
Rubies, emeralds aglow, —
Opal chains in Buffalo,
Cherished symbols of success.
They value not your rainbow dress: —
Niagara, Niagara.

The shaggy meaning of her name
This Buffalo, this recreant town,
Sharps and lawyers prune and tame;
Few pioneers in Buffalo;
Except young lovers flushed and fleet
And winds hallooing down the street:
“Niagara, Niagara.”

The journalists are sick of ink:
Boy prodigals are lost in wine,
By night where white and red lights blink
The eyes of Death, in Buffalo.
And only twenty miles away
Are starlit rocks and healing spray: —
Niagara, Niagara.

Above the town a tiny bird,
A shining speck at sleepy dawn,
Forgets the ant-hill so absurd,
This self-important Buffalo.
Descending twenty miles away
He bathes his wings at break of day —
Niagara, Niagara.

II

What marching men of Buffalo
Flood the streets in rash crusade?
Fools-to-free-the-world, they go,
Primeval hearts from Buffalo.
Red cataracts of France today
Awake, three thousand miles away
An echo of Niagara,
The cataract Niagara.

Source:  Vachel Lindsay. The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917.

See also the Poetry Magazine version of Niagara

niagara vachel lindsay

Niagara Falls by Alan Dugan

Alan Dugan
Alan Dugan, 1923-2003

We saw it all. We saw the souvenir shops, and sitting
on the mist above the falls, the brilliant signs
saying hotels to love in, cigarettes to smoke,
souvenirs for proof; we give you anything you want,
even towels. Our disgust was as stylized as billboards,
and we suggested to ourselves that even our sympathy
for the ugly people of the off-season was outworn.
But here it was, nevertheless, the ferocious, spastic
enjoyment, the hotels like freight-yards or packing crates,
the lights that murder sight, and the community snicker.
The falls, of course, continued with great dignity.

Source:  Poetry,  April 1947,  p 12.

Niagara Falls by John Robert Colombo

(a found poem from the unpublished writings of Bishop John Strachan)

sublime niagara falls
Bishop John Strachan

My brother, after some hesitation,
ventured down the precipice;
and, having reached the bed
of the river below,
we were well rewarded.
It was now
that my expectations were realized:
the height of the rock —
the thundering of the Fall —
the spray forming in rain-bows —
the vast volume of water
rolling over the impending precipice,
produced a sensation overpoweringly
sublime.

 

Source: Colombo, John Robert; and Strachan, John. John Toronto: New Poems by Dr. Strachan Found by John Robert Colombo. [Ottawa] : Oberon Press, 1969.

From the dust jacket: The poems are taken verbatim from Strachan’s uncollected writings. They are poems by virtue of the special character of their eloquence. They are new in that they speak with fresh urgency and directness to a new age.

Click here to see a biography of Bishop Strachan from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography

WHAT GOES UP WILL ALWAYS COME DOWN by Shelby Forrest

Niagara Falls viagra

Though Viagra and Niagara may sound the same,
Not alike are the meanings at all.
To some, Viagra means ‘on the rise,’
But to everyone, Niagara Falls.

Source: The Author, 2001.

[Father Louis Hennepin] by Captain Flynn

Straight up Frontenac’s Northmost side
Ever a West he sailed,
Crossing in blessed Advent tide,
Landing on great Niagara’s shore.
South he turned to a sullen roar;
His Crucifix on his heart he bore;
Never his spirit failed.

Now Glory to God, whose hand did forge
This wondrous watery road!
On ragged rim of the fearful gorge
South he toiled through brambles and moss,
Past rapids roaring like souls atoss.
He blessed himself with the sign of the Cross
At the cliff where the torrent flowed.

His little altar was quick untied;
Small waxen tapers alight,
He said the Mass of the Sanctified.
Turning South through the wintry haze,
His eyes aglow, his heart ablaze,
At Chippawa’s flow, with a song of praise,
He made his camp for the night.

Source: Ray Corry Bond. Peninsula Village: The Story of Chippawa. Chippawa: [s.n.], 1964.