Category: Niagara History & Folklore

Resignation to the Approaching Period of Decline and Decay by James Melloy

melloy
The page from The Album of Bradt Family Hair with this poem pasted on it 
Courtesy of Brock University Archives & Special Collections

Days of my youth, ye have glided away ;
Hairs of my youth, ye are frosted and gray ;
Eyes of my youth, your keen sight is no more ;
Cheeks of my youth, ye are furrowed all o’er ;
Strength of my youth, all your vigor is gone ;
Thoughts of my youth, your gay visions are flown.

Days of my youth, I wish not your recall ;
Hairs of my youth, I’m content ye should fall ;
Eyes of my youth, ye much evil have seen ;
Cheeks of my youth, bathed in tears have ye been ;
Thoughts of my youth, ye have led me astray ;
Strength of my youth, why lament your decay ?

Days of my age, ye will shortly be past ;
Pains of my age, yet a while can ye last ;
Joys of my age, in true wisdom delight ;
Eyes of my age, be religion your light ;
Thoughts of my age, dread ye not the cold sod ;
Hopes of my age, be ye fixed on your God.

This poem is from a newspaper clipping dated December 8, 1893, pasted into The Bradt Family Hair Album in the Brock University Archives. The Bradt family were United Empire Loyalists who settled in Niagara-on-the-Lake and the St. Catharines area. 

Above the poem is written:

“A Relic of 1812

The following beautiful lines were among the relics left by Mrs. Susan Dunn, (wife of William Dunn, J.P., late of the township of Wainfleet, and county of Welland, Ont.) and second eldest daughter of the late David Price, who for many years held the position of secretary of the government stores at Fort George, Niagara.”

Beneath the poem is written:

“James Melloy,
Conductor of King’s Stores, &c., &c., &c.

This is for the amiable the Misses Price to learn by heart, which will give great pleasure and joy to their devoted and very humble servant,

James Melloy,
Fort George, at Head Quarters, Oct. 29th, 1812” 

Another poem that might be of interest is Lines Written for a Lady’s Hair Album, at Niagara by M.F. Bigney. Bigney’s poem is not in the Bradt album.

Read the article Hairy Memories: Hair albums used braided hair to create memories by James Rada, Jr.

 

 

Lines Written for a Lady’s Hair Album, at Niagara by M.F. Bigney

hair
A Page from The Album of Bradt Family Hair 
Courtesy of Brock University Archives & Special Collections

 


DEAR braided locks ! which tell 
‡‡‡‡‡Of the distant, the departed, 
As the songs of ocean murmur in the shell ; 
‡‡‡‡‡And which whisper—”All is well !” 
‡‡‡‡‡When we might be lonely hearted 
And with voiceless music mystically swell.

‡‡‡‡‡Locks fair, and dark, and gray,
‡‡‡‡‡Erst to kindred ringlets mated ;
Severed from the crowns of loved ones now away. 
‡‡‡‡‡Some in spirit-gardens stray,
‡‡‡‡‡Warmed by suns all uncreated,
And some still linger with us in the clay.

‡‡‡‡‡To other times ye pass,
‡‡‡‡‡Bright aids to recollection, 
Mirroring the storied past as in a glass,
‡‡‡‡‡And shall we cry, alas !
‡‡‡‡‡In our spirit’s deep dejection, 
For those cut down and withered as the grass ?

‡‡‡‡‡No : they shall reappear
‡‡‡‡‡In a land of light unending, 
Where no eye shall e er be dimmed by a tear—
‡‡‡‡‡In that higher, purer sphere
‡‡‡‡‡Where celestial glories blending, 
Shall form a crown for those who triumph here.

Source: M.F. Bigney. The Forest Pilgrims, and Other Poems. New Orleans: James A. Gresham, 1867

Bigney was the editor of The New Orleans Daily

From the Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Louisiana, vol 2:  

“J.W. Overall and M.F. Bigney were liberal and enlightened patrons of literature in New Orleans. Both were poets, and Mr. Bigney published, in 1867, a volume called The Forest Pilgrims, and Other Poems, among which the “Wreck of the Nautilus” has often been quoted.

Read the article Hairy Memories: Hair albums used braided hair to create memories by James Rada, Jr.

See The Bradt Family Hair Album in the Brock University Archives. The Bradt family were United Empire Loyalists who settled in Niagara-on-the-Lake and the St. Catharines area. This poem by Bigney was not written in the Bradt album, although the poem Resignation to the Approaching Period of Decline and Decay by James Melloy was.

To Avoid an Unpleasant Tryst by Christopher Ellis

ellis
Niagara Falls from the Maid of the Mist Boat, 2022
Photo by Andrew Porteus

A young girl who’d never been kissed
To avoid an unpleasant tryst
She paddled her skiff
O’er the watery cliff
Becoming the Maid of the Mist

Source: Laroque, Corey. Here’s What the Poets are Saying. Niagara Falls, Ont.: Niagara Falls Review, November 21, 2009

This limerick was entered into the So You Think You Can Rhyme (2009) Limerick Contest to find Niagara Falls’ Poet Laureate

Go to the Limericks page

To the House of My Friend by Erieus

house
The House Where Brock’s Body Was Carried To And Hidden During The Battle
by Ian Graham, 1977
Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
This house would have been standing in 1826 when Erieus wrote this poem.

House of my Friend! — may no dishonoring stain
Pollute thy sacred walls: — may virtue bright
The blest direction of her course maintain,
And guide thy inmates in the ways of right:
May no intruding demon ever blight
Their mutual harmony, and love, and peace;
But meek Religion’s pure, celestial light
Shine in each heart, — there grow, and never cease,
Till Heaven itself shall be the measure of increase.

Written at Niagara, August 1826

Adam Hood Burwell published poems under the pen name Erieus, the “Pioneer Poet of Upper Canada.”

Source: MacDonald, Mary Lu. “New” Poems of Adam Hood Burwell. canadianpoetry.org/volumes/vol18/macdonald.html, 5/12/2020. Originally published in The U.E. Loyalist, October 28, 1826

Chernobyl by John Wall Barger

barger
Annie Edson Taylor, Queen of the Mist, After Her Trip Over the Horseshoe Falls
Photo by M.H. Zahner
Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

Annie Edson Taylor
first to survive Niagara Falls in a barrel
she is our heroine.
The Zone glitters like a mirage
an abandoned city
à la Tarkovsky’s Stalker
fizzing with radiation.
Taylor—praise her—sleepwalks
on the lawn of the soporific
hospital.  She blinks,
eyes yellow, shadowed
by the central chimney.
Is it a lighthouse in the desert?
The Zone wears her dream
like a gown.  The hospital
wears the rubble like a gown.
Taylor wears a long black dress
& a fruit hat.  Front stairs
of the hyperacute hospital,
Taylor coughs, on her knees.
How, you wonder,
did she get here?  Don’t ask me.
I wanted to write a poem
to exalt a nice thing.
Yet here she is, spasming,
spitting a dark thread.
“Stop!”  you say, “Don’t go in!”
Yet in she goes.
Her black dress slips off
& her fruit hat.  She is naked
walking the hallway
past rooms of box-spring beds.
Here is a room heaped
with clothes: firefighter boots,
gas masks. Sooty tables,
murky slime.  An arthritic tree
curls in a shattered window.
A box-spring so tiny
It could be a doll’s bed.
Taylor stops, bows low,
palms together, mumbling words
I can’t even hear.
I’m tempted to remind her
she died sixty-five years 
before Chernobyl.
But now she’s alert,
back straight, listening
with her whole body
for what? I beg her
to put on the fruit hat,
just for the end of the poem.
It’s not too late!
But she keeps tossing it
onto a pile
of melted toys.

Source: John Wall Barger.  The Mean Game. Windsor, Ont.: Palimpsest Press, 2019.

Visit the website of John Wall Barger 

Follow Barger on social media @johnwallbarger

Read about Annie Edson Taylor