Category: Niagara Falls Poetry

The Cataract Isle by Christopher Pearse Cranch

The Emerald Isle by Christopher Pearse Cranch
Christopher Pearse Cranch

I wandered through the ancient wood
That crowns the cataract isle.
I heard the roaring of the flood
And saw its wild, fierce smile.

Through tall tree-tops the sunshine flecked
The huge trunks and the ground;
And the pomp of fullest summer decked
The island all around.

And winding paths led all along
Where friends and lovers strayed;
And voices rose with laugh and song
From sheltered nooks of shade.

Through opening forest vistas whirled
The rapids’ foamy flash,
As they boiled along and plunged and swirled,
And neared the last long dash.

I crept to the island’s outer verge,
Where the grand, broad river fell —
Fell sheer down mid foam and surge,
In a white and blinding hell!

The steady rainbow gayly shone
Above the precipice;
And a deep, low tone of a thunder-groan
Rolled up from the drear abyss.

And all the day sprang up the spray,
Where the broad, white sheets were poured,
And fell around in showery play,
Or upward curled and soared.

And all the night those sheets of white
Gleamed through the spectral mist,
When o’er the isle the broad moonlight
The wintry foam-flakes kissed.

Mirrored within thy dreamy thought,
I see it, feel it all, —
That island with sweet visions fraught,
That awful waterfall.

With sunflecked trees, and birds, and flowers,
The Isle of Life is fair:
But one deep voice thrills through its hours,
One spectral form is there, —

A power no mortal can resist,
Rolling forever on, —
A floating cloud, a shadowy mist,
Eternal undertone!

And through the sunny vistas gleam
The fate, the solemn smile;
Life is Niagara’s rushing stream;
Its dreams — that peaceful isle!

September, 1853

Source: Christopher Pearse Cranch. The Bird and the Bell, with Other Poems. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1875

Also published in Myron T. Pritchard, comp. Poetry of Niagara. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Co., 1901.

Also published in R. L. Johnson. Niagara: Its History, Incidents and Poetry Washington: W. Neale, 1898

Niagara by Joseph Hart Clinch

Describe Niagara!     Ah, who shall dare
Attempt the indescribable, and train
Thought‘s fragile wing to skim the heavy air,
Wet with the cataract‘s incessant rain?
The “glowing muse of fire“ invoked in vain
By Shakespeare, who shall hope from Heaven to win?
And “burning words“ alone become the strain,
Which to the mind would bring the awful din
Where seas in thunder fall, and eddying oceans spin.

Long had the savage on thy glorious shroud,
Fringed with vast foam-wreaths, gaz‘d with stoic eye
And deemed that on thy rising rainbow cloud
The wings of the Great Spirit hovered nigh;
And, as he marked the solemn woods reply
In echoes to thy rolling thunder tone,
He heard His voice upon the breeze go by,
And his heart bowed — for to the heart alone
God speaking through His works, makes what he utters known.

But ages passed away — and to the West
Came Europe‘s sons to seek for fame or gold;
And one, perchance, more daring than the rest,
Lured by the chase or by strange stories told
By Indian guide of oceans downward rolled,
Felt on his throbbing ear thy far-off roar,
Then sped the mighty wonder to behold,
Thy voice around him and thy cloud before,
Till breathless — trembling — rapt — he trod thy foaming shore.
Continue reading “Niagara by Joseph Hart Clinch” →

Surging Water by Phillip W. Weiss

Surging
Phillip W. Weiss

Millions of gallons
of surging water,
unstopping, relentless,
swirling through the gorges,
hurdling over the rocks,
furiously charging, headlong,
like a mighty herd of buffalo
racing madly toward a precipice,
but on a scale
and with an intensity
that overwhelms the observer,
reducing one to a mere spectator,
humbled by the sound and the fury
of nature’s most enduring
exhibition of unbridled power
at a place called …
Niagara Falls

Listen to Surging Water by Phillip W. Weiss. Read by Oliver Porteus

Copyright (c) 2004 Phillip W. Weiss
Source: The author, 2004.

Surging Water is one of the poems featured on the Poetry Walking Tour of Niagara Falls

See his other poem on the site, Niagara Falls

Phillip W. Weiss’ literary website
Phillip W Weiss’ photographic website

Niagara Falls by Phillip W.Weiss

Phillip W. Weis
Phillip W. Weis

Niagara Falls
majestic curtains
of surging water
cascading, never-ending,
onto the jagged rocks below.

Creating a roar,
like rolling thunder,
a tidal wave of sound
reverberating off the cliffs,
both powerful and soothing,
it can even lull a baby
    to sleep.

And of course the mist,
floating high into the sky,
like plumes of gossamer silk,
meeting the rays of the sun,
forming radiant rainbows,
each a crescent of dazzling colors,
like a tiara of diamonds
adorning the royal head of
    a noble queen.

For Niagara Falls
is nature’s gift to humanity:
her splendor unmatched,
her beauty sublime,
to be admired and treasured,
    like a priceless gem,
for all times.


Copyright (c)2004 Phillip W. Weiss

Source: The author, 2004.

See his other poem on this site, Surging Water

Phillip W. Weiss’ literary website
Phillip W Weiss’ photographic website

Niagara Falls by Kathryn Munro

Kathryn Munro
Kathryn Munro
On thundering feet you take the dread abyss,
      Shaking the stolid earth around, below,
      Where puny mortals gaze but may not know
The cosmic surge of elemental bliss,
The soaring passion of the lethal kiss
      That hides within your swift arterial flow.
      Most prodigal of waters, to bestow
So rich inheritance on man as this.
Niagara, the mighty, rainbow-spanned,
      Majestic, terrible your potency!
What aeons since He cupped you in His hand
      Who gave His space its wheeling argosy,
And bade you ride this rampart of our land
      Companionless, alone, eternally!

Source: V.B. Rhodenizer, (ed.) Canadian Poetry Magazine vol. 22, no. 3, Spring 1959.

About Kathryn Munro (married name Kathryn Munro Tupper)