The left hand pocket of my old blue denim jeans
Hold coins from three nations
Cents dimes and pennies
Laughter hides the sheer glimpse
Of a trail echoed in geography of Kent
Even plain fields belie the modern journey
Syndicated music follows in our wake
Announcing our arrival in neon lit cascades
Lived in motels stale facades heavy with its own faded thirst
A living promise of being the first
The left hand pocket of my old blue denim jeans
Hold coins from three nations
Cents dimes and pennies
Late arrivals barred from splendid thoughts
Neon men let you walk to the late night store
Full of unsleepable teens
Packaged dreams enclosed in plastic wraps
Music louder beyond the hands of an older leather jacket
Sleep will bring the dawn
Then wake and follow the throngs on the same worn lawn
Glorious morning filled with youth watching
In awe and disbelief nature in splendour charging
Smooth aged mist nurturing rocks
Dressed each day in bright new frocks
Freedom to roam without locks
Nature dressed as always in new clothes
Even in your veil your beauty shows
The left hand pocket of my old blue denim jeans
Hold coins from three nations
Cents dimes and pennies
Below Table Rock, Drawn from nature for the Proprietor Hermann J. Meyer. Photo courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
I HEAR flood voices in thy cavern halls,
Deep unto deep there uttereth grave speech;
The sounds of torrent minstrelsy here reach
To heaven from the profound within thy walls;
Upon my deafened ear in terror falls,
Thy roar, as of some dread volcano’s breach,
Or ocean storm-waves hurled upon the beach!
Earth trembleth at thy passing mighty flood!
From the unfathomed chambers of the deep,
These voices of thy many waters keep,
In thunder-tones and grand majestic mood,
One everlasting anthem praising God!
Thy fearful pathway leads thee o’er a steep,
Which thou thyself alone dost dare to leap!
I feel to worship now — here from this seat,
High o’er the beetling cliffs above the brink
Of thy abyss, I wonder, gaze, and think : —
How restless is thy surge beneath my feet!
For ever rolling rushing on to meet
Old Ocean’s boundless depths, for aye to sink
Deep in oblivion, whence we mortals shrink!
Heaven archeth o’er thy gates, great deluge-born!
With bow that sprang from world-submerging waves:
Below its circling reach thy maddened flood here raves;
And chronicles on walls of adamant deep worn,
The years that have been since thy birth-day morn!
For ever lost the bark that rashly braves
The war of adverse waters — no arm saves!
Proud kings and purpled potentates of earth,
With trophies borne in march from battle-plain,
Where sleep the glorious dead in havoc slain,
Sound clarion loud and seek the distant hearth,
Through arch-triumphal reared at place of birth;
How mean are they beside my monarch train,
Thy going forth to join the Stormy Main!
Source: Swickhamer, Conrad, ed. United States Democratic Review. New Series, vol. 17, no. 6, December 1858. p. 475-476.
Roar, raging torrent! and thou, mighty river,
Pour thy white foam on the valley below;
Frown, ye dark mountains! and shadow for ever
The deep rocky bed where the wild rapids flow.
The green sunny glade, and the smooth flowing fountain,
Brighten the home of the coward and slave;
The flood and the forest, the rock and the mountain,
Rear on their bosoms the free and the brave.
II.
Nurslings of nature, I mark your bold bearing,
Pride in each aspect and strength in each form,
Hearts of warm impulse, and souls of high daring,
Born in the battle and rear’d in the storm.
The red levin flash and the thunder’s dread rattle,
The rock-riven wave and the war trumpet’s breath,
The din of the tempest, the yell of the battle,
Nerve your steeled bosoms to danger and death.
III.
High on the brow of the Alps’ snowy towers
The mountain Swiss measures his rock-breasted moors,
O’er his lone cottage the avalanche lowers,
Round its rude portal the spring-torrent pours.
Sweet is his sleep amid peril and danger,
Warm is his greeting to kindred and friends,
Open his hand to the poor and the stranger,
Stern on his foeman his sabre descends.
IV.
Lo! where the tempest the dark waters sunder
Slumbers the sailor boy, reckless and brave,
Warm’d by the lighting and lulled by the thunder,
Fann’d by the whirlwind and rock’d on the wave;
Wildly the winter wind howls round his pillow,
Cold on his bosom the spray showers fall;
Creaks the strained mast at the rush of the billow,
Peaceful he slumbers, regardless of all.
V.
Mark how the cheek of the warrior flushes,
As the battle drum beats and the war torches glare;
Like a blast of the north to the onset he rushes,
And his wide-waving falchion gleams brightly in air.
Around him the death-shot of foemen are flying,
At his feet friends and comrades are yielding their breath;
He strikes to the groans of the wounded and dying,
But the war cry he strikes with is, ‘conquest or death!’
VI.
Then pour thy broad wave like a flood from the heavens,
Each son that thou rearest, in the battle’s wild shock,
When the death-speaking note of the trumpet is given,
Will charge like thy torrent or stand like thy rock.
Let his roof be the cloud and the rock be his pillow,
Let him stride the rough mountain, or toss on the foam,
He will strike fast and well on the field or the billow,
In triumph and glory, for God and his home!
Source: Joseph Rodman Drake The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems, New York: George Dearborn, 1836
In his book Papers and proceedings of the Drake Memorial Celebration, May 29, 1915 : together with a bibliography of the writings of Dr. Joseph Rodman Drake by Victor Hugo Paltsits he mentions that a manuscript notebook dated 1817 and entitled Trifles in Rhyme written by Joseph Rodman Drake includes the poem Niagara.
In 1835, H. Clinch published the two-stanza poem Niagara which is almost identical to the first and last (6th) stanzas of this poem.
How sweet ‘t would be, when all the air,
In moonlight swims along the river,
To couch upon the grass and hear
Niagara’s everlasting voice
Far in the deep blue West away;
That dreamy and poetic noise
We mark not in the glare of day —
Oh, how unlike its torrent-cry
When o’er the brink the tide is driven,
As if the vast and sheeted sky
In thunder fell from Heaven!
Source: Myron T. Prichard, comp. Poetry of Niagara. Boston: Lothrup Publishing Co., 1901
Originally published as part Fragment in Drake’s The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems, New York: George Dearborn, 1836
(Found Some Years Ago at the Foot of Goat Island, Niagara)
Horseshoe Fall and Goat Island Seen from Table Rock by James Hope-Wallace. Courtesy Niagara Falls Public Library
I turned aside to pluck thee, sweetest flower,
From thy low bed, where, almost hid from sight,
Thou lay’st besieged by rocks, whose giant power
Was broken ere they reached thee with their might.
Thou grewest there, so tiny and alone,
Among the rocks that formed thy hardened bed;
And yet thou seem’st no sadness to have known,
For heaven’s blue had crowned thy tender head.
Thou wast the only flower that I could see —
The place around was ruinously bare;
And yet thou grewest there contentedly,
Although thou livedst on but rocky fare.
Thou only heardst the cataract’s fierce roar —
The torrents never reached thy rocky bed;
So thou wast safe, though near where fierce floods pour;
The spray but dashed upon thy bending head.
I found thee with thy sweetness hid away,
Far from my path upon the rocks beneath;
I clambered down to claim without delay
Thy slender beauty and thy fragrant breath.
Thou hast for me the tenderest memory,
For him, who was my comrade in those days;
Scarce can I meet until eternity,
When God brings him from India’s burning rays.
I hold thee as a treasure to my heart —
Thy life was so much like my own poor life;
For I, like thee, alone must do my part,
And stand unaided amidst rocks of strife.
And, like thee, may I pass my feeble day,
And never know the torrent’s deadly force;
But may just feel the invigorating spray,
And bless some traveller in his earthly course.
Source: Kevin McCabe, ed. The Poetry of Old Niagara. St. Catharines, Ont. : Blarney Stone Books, 1999.
Originally published in Crawford’s Poems of Yesterday Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1924
