Poetry of and about Niagara Falls & the Niagara River – the waterfalls, the city, the history, the stunters, and everything else Niagara
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡I.
Some vast despair, some grief divine,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Doth vigil keep
Forever here ; before this shrine
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡The waters weep.
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡II.
Methinks a God from some far sphere,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡In sportive part,
In ages past wooed Nature here,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡And broke her heart.
Source: Robert Loveman. Poems. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1897
Previously published in Loveman’s Poems, Tuscaloosa, Burton, 1893
Oft have I stood in fancy on the shore
‡‡‡‡Of Niagara, and with moistened eye
‡‡‡‡Peered through imaginary mists to spy
The wall of waters and the boiling floor —
But never hath it been my chance before
‡‡‡‡To see in work of hand or fantasy,
‡‡‡‡Old Ocean tumbling thus from middle sky. —
Hark ! heard ye not the solid thunderous roar ?
Even while I gaze, methinks the scene grows dark,
‡‡‡‡Save where yon light flashed past the blasted pine ;
It nears, it kindles — ’tis a blazing bark —
‡‡‡‡Lo ! o’er the Horse-shoe’s foamy-crested line,
Sped like a shot-star to destruction’s mark,
‡‡‡‡Down to perdition flames the Caroline !
Dublin, April, 1838
Source: Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, vol 43, issue 271. May 1838. Found in: Alison Chapman (ed.) and the DVPP team, Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry: Periodicals,
Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry Project
An engraving of the painting, Niagara Falls as Seen From Below, that inspired Ferguson to write this sonnet was found in John Howard Hinton (ed.). The History and Topography of the United States of North America: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, vol. 2. New & Improved Edition. Boston: Samuel Walker, 1834. It is not known if this was where Ferguson saw the painting.
The burning Steamer Caroline went over the Horseshoe Falls on the night of December 29, 1837. Read about the burning of the Caroline at the Niagara Falls Museums website
I came to see ;
I thought to write ;
I am but ——— dumb.
Source: Holley, George W., ed. The Falls of Niagara. Baltimore: A.C. Armstrong & Son, 1883
Originally from The Table Rock Albums. Click to see the Table of Contents on this site.
An artist, underneath his sign, (a masterpiece, of course),
Had written, to prevent mistakes, ‘This represents a horse’;
So ere I send my Album Sketch, lest connoisseurs should err,
I think it well my Pen should be my Art’s interpreter.
A chieftain of the Iroquois, clad in a bison’s skin,
Had led two travelers through the wood, La Salle and Hennepin.
He points, and there they, standing, gaze upon the ceaseless flow
Of waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.
Those three are gone, and little heed our worldly gain or loss—
The Chief, the Soldier of the Sword, the Soldier of the Cross.
One died in battle, one in bed, and one by secret foe;
But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago.
Ah, me! what myriads of men, since then, have come and gone;
What states have risen and decayed, what prizes lost and won;
What varied tricks the juggler, Time, has played with all below:
But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago.
What troops of tourists have encamped upon the river’s brink;
What poets shed from countless quills, Niagaras of ink;
What artist armies tried to fix the evanescent bow
Of the waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.
And stately inns feed scores of guests from well replenished larder,
And hackmen drive their horses hard, but drive a bargain harder;
And screaming locomotives rush in anguish to and fro:
But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago.
And brides of every age and clime frequent the island’s bower,
And gaze from off the stone-built perch—hence called the Bridal Tower—
And many a lunar belle goes forth to meet a lunar beau,
By the waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.
And bridges bind thy breast, O, stream! and buzzing mill-wheels turn,
To show, like Samson, thou art forced thy daily bread to earn;
And steamers splash thy milk-white waves, exulting as they go,
But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago.
Thy banks no longer are the same that early travelers found them,
But break and crumble now and then like other banks around them;
And on their verge our life sweeps on—alternate joy and woe:
But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago.
Thus phantoms of a by-gone age have melted like the spray,
And in our turn we too shall pass, the phantoms of to-day:
But the armies of the coming time shall watch the ceaseless flow
Of waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.
Source: Johnson, Richard L. (ed). Niagara: Its History, Incidents and Poetry. Washington, Walter Neale General Book Publisher, 1898
Also published in Holley, G. W., ed. Niagara: Its History and Geology, Incidents and Poetry. Toronto, Hunter, Rose and Company, 1872
Also Published in Holley, George W., ed. The Falls of Niagara and Other Famous Cataracts. Baltimore: A.C. Armstrong & Son, 1883
Holley says of this poem: “The most graceful verses on Niagara ever written by a resident are the following by the late Colonel Porter, who was an artist both with the pencil and the pen. They were written for a young relative in playful explanation of a sketch he had drawn at the top of a page in her album, representing the Falls in the distance, and an Indian chief and two Europeans in the foreground.”
Read The Poetry of Peter A. Porter by Michelle Ann Kratts
Read about Colonel Peter A. Porter
“Man lays his scepter on the ocean waste,
His footprints stiffen in the Alpine snows,
But only God moves visibly in Thee,
O King of Floods! that with resistless fate
Down plungest in thy mighty width and depth.
* * * * * Amazement, terror, fill,
Impress and overcome the gazer’s soul.