Category: Niagara Falls Poems

Suicide Note by Walter Haywood

haywood
Niagara Falls From a Glass Transparency by Detroit Publishing Company, c. 1890. Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Here poor, unfortunate Haywood lies;
Nobody laughs, nobody cries;
Where he’s gone and how he fares
Nobody knows and nobody cares.

Source: T.W. Kriner. In the Mad Water: Two Centuries of Adventure and Lunacy at Niagara Falls.  Buffalo: J & J Publishing, 1999

Haywood jumped over Niagara Falls on September 10, 1891, and his body was never recovered. The above poem was found in a suicide letter addressed to Haywood’s friend Charles D. Nichols, as published in In the Mad Water:

Friend Charlie —

By the time you get this letter I shall be no more. You must, of course, know that I have run behind a Salamanca. In fact, I have not been able to make expenses since I went there. You see, old man, I had to wait there more than three weeks for goods, and, of course, it put me behind a good deal. And now that I realize how much I am in debt to B. & L. I see no way for me to make the same good, and I can’t and won’t face the disgrace of a defaulter.

I have come here with the deliberate intention of committing suicide, and I have a ticket in my pocket now for Niagara Falls. I leave here at 12 o’clock and will go over the falls as soon as I get there. I made a great mistake, Charlie, when I went to work for Baker; it was all out of my line, and now that the end has come and I see nothing but disgrace staring me in the face, I would suffer a thousand deaths before I would be sent up as a thief. I never intended to do wrong, but circumstances were against me, and I am now going to pay for the same with my life. Some, of course, will say that I am crazy, but you know better than that. I am just as cool and collected now as I ever was in my life. I owe Louis some $12.00, but he has plenty of goods in his charge and will no doubt look out for himself. I don’t know how much I am behind with B. & L., but it must be about $35.00.

Well, old man, don’t think worse of me than you can help, for I never meant to do what I have, and I guess I am my own worse enemy. You will, of course. see from the papers that I have done as I have stated, but I thought I would write to you anyway, as you alone can understand why I should take my life, And now, my friend, good bye.

If my body is found I think the following verse would be very appropriate.

Here poor, unfortunate Haywood lies;
Nobody laughs, nobody cries;
Where he’s gone and how he fares
Nobody knows and nobody cares.

Yours sincerely,

Walter Haywood
Buffalo, Sept. 10, 1891

At a Niagara Falls Bazaar by Evelyn M. Watson

bazaar
Captain Webb’s Indian Bazaar, located between where the Rainbow Bridge & the Oakes Garden Theatre now stand. Photo courtesy of Mrs. J.W. Zeiger / Niagara Falls Public Library

Today conditions seemed reversed :
I paced such old Emporium
As grace Niagara’s streets — immersed
In thoughts that forced themselves to come :
The aisles of souvenirs, and such
As litter up old parlors and
Crimped antique furniture, brought much
Of childhood interest at hand.

I saw small tables cluttered tight
With “after dinner” cups, scarce room
For salts and peppers, very bright
To grace some full Victorian gloom.
Then reminiscences that slept
Grew quick when, lifting high a ball
Of watery glass, a snowstorm swept
Across the too chromatic Fall.

The snow spun wildly till I felt
A childhood agony, a-shiver
For souls emperilled — storm but spelt
Gray death upon the painted river !
I found afresh the tense delight
In pain, so paradoxical
And lived anew the sleeted night —
And then replaced the watery ball.

Oh, sugar bowls, oh, strings of shells,
Oh, silver fit for banquet halls,
What grief and laughter when one dwells
On certain memories of the Falls :
A relative, in hurrying me,
Brought back a sense of time, but far
I’d traveled lanes of memory
Within that dazzling Bazaar.

Source:  Evelyn M. Watson. Poems of the Niagara Frontier.  New York: Dean & Company, 1929.

See other poems by Watson

The Eternal Blunder by Al Knobloch

 

 

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Photo of the Horseshoe Falls, Prospect Point Observation Tower, and the Rainbow Bridge, which inspired this poem. Courtesy of Al Knobloch

The river Niagara flows placidly by
With waters polluted by you and by I
By seeping landfills and chemical pits too
A bane to two countries; historically quite new
But then its pace quickens as tourists arrive
Car fumes rise up to the gulls as they fly
As over the brink suicides take the plunge
While after their cameras onlookers do lunge
In springtime, in summer, and then autumn too
Millions converge on this vast human zoo
The hotels keep rising, no zenith in sight
Parking is crazy, the prices a fright
The Falls is encircled with commercial lust
Most ways of our fathers are left in the dust
Casinos proliferate, lounge lizards croon
Ya gotta admit, it’s a commercial boon
Growth exponential, the Maids multiply
Soon to morph into an endless supply
Now worldwide attention is focused right here
Is it due to the Falls, or due to the fear
Mother Nature eclipsed by human nature alive
“Will he really make it, will he survive?”
Dollars flow in, millions will spy
Still spray reaches up to the gulls who still fly
Oh where is the peace, where is the wonder
The natives sought out before our eternal blunder

Source:  Al Knobloch. Blog post May 29, 2012.  Niagara History and Trivia Facebook Group

This poem is a revised version of a class assignment that Knobloch wrote in high school.

Al Knobloch in front of Prospect Point in Niagara Falls, before its collapse in 1954. Image courtesy of Al Knobloch

 

Niagara Falls by William McClure

mcclure
Picnic in Queen Victoria Park, 1927. Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

Niagara!   What memories you evoke,
A mecca for all travel-folder folk;
The honeymooners’ lure, and lovers’ pride
Whose name is lauded o’er the countryside.

Here comes the tired and jaded business man
Hot from convention halls; now spick and span;
The busy housewife, proud of all her brood
And cheerful hubby, carrying their food,
The picnic lunch in famed Victoria Park,
Where they, as lovers, often sat at dark.
Now, staid and sober, middle-aged and fat,
They reminisce of other days, and that
First visit to the Falls, where all around
The matrimonial tendency they found.
The younger generation they now scan
And smile to see them follow the same plan.

There, tired old granny, taken for a ride;
Her face aglow with pleasure, like a bride,
Renews again her dreams of former days
When everything seemed rosy in a haze.
The rich, the poor, the famous from all lands
All gather round the work of nature’s hands
To view the famous cascade, glittering bright,
Which of itself provides the power for light.
The roaring torrent as it thunders o’er
And deafens nearby tourists with its roar
Casts a magnetic spell on all around
As thunderous rumbles shake the quivering ground.

But nature works her will remorselessly,
And changes in our time we all can see;
Yet still the cry goes up when pleasure palls,
That come what may, “We MUST go to the Falls.”

Source: Toronto Daily Star, March 31, 1939

According to a column by J.V. McAres in the Globe & Mail, April 14, 1951, McClure wrote more than a thousand poems published in various Canadian newspapers.

Obituary of William McClure, Welland Tribune, November 19, 1955

Rest! by William H. C. Hosmer

hosmer
Cemetery at Fort Niagara, in the midst of a gravestone cleaning project. Image courtesy of New York State Parks


A  few rods from the barrier-gate of Fort Niagara was the burying-ground. It was filled with memorials of the mutability and brevity of human life, and over the portals of entrance was painted, in large and emphatic characters, the word ‘Rest’ — Judge De Veaux.

Earth, upon her ample face,
Boasts no sweeter burial-place
Than a small enclosure green,
Near an ancient fortress seen ;
Mossy head-stones here and there
Names of fallen warriors bear,
But no eulogistic phrase,
Cut on rock, that meets the gaze,
Can our reverence command,
Like that brief inscription grand,
On the portal arch impressed —
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡“Rest!”

River wide, and mighty lake
For the dead an anthem wake,
And with old, forgotten graves
Well comports the wash of waves,
Motto of the hallowed ground
Murmuring with solemn sound ;
Birds that by like spirits pass,
Winds that murmur in the grass,
Seem repeating evermore
That one word the gateway o’er,
Word that haunts a troubled breast—
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡“Rest!”

Pilgrim, for a moment wait
Near the narrow entrance gate,
And one word peruse — no more —
Boldly traced the portals o’er ;
Mortal heart was never stirred
By a more emphatic word ;
One with deeper meaning fraught,
Or the power to quicken thought ;
Sermon, hymn, and funeral lay,
Eloquence the soul to sway,
In four letters are compressed —
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡“Rest!”

Source:  Hosmer, William H.C.  The Poetical Works of William H.C. Hosmer. New York: Redfield, 1854

See casual references to Niagara in other poems by Hosmer

Read about William Howe Cuyler Hosmer

Old Fort Niagara website