Category: Niagara River Poems

Niagara Dry by James McIntyre

dry
The ice boom on Lake Erie at the mouth of the Niagara River, designed to stop ice from stopping the flow of water in the Niagara River. Photo by Dr. Frank Seglenieks

It happened once in early spring,
‡‡While there did float great thick ice cakes,
That then a gale did quickly bring
‡‡Them all down from the upper lakes.

And from Buffalo to Lake Erie,
‡‡Across the entrance to river,
It was a scene of icebergs dreary,
‡‡Those who saw will remember ever.

Then gale blew up lake and river,
‡‡And left Niagara almost dry,
This a lady did discover
‡‡As above the Falls she cast her eye.

Such scene it had been witnessed never,
‡‡Since Israelites crossed the Red Sea,
When they had resolved forever
‡‡From Pharaoh’s bondage to flee.

Lady she resolved to venture,
‡‡Proudly carrying British flag,
Erecting it in river’s centre
‡‡In crevice of a rocky crag.

It seems like a romance by Bulwer,
‡‡How she captured Niagara,
But it was seen by Bishop Fuller,
‡‡Who did at sight of flag hurrah.

Ten thousand years may die away
‡‡Before another dry can tread,
In bottom of Niagara,
‡‡For she doth jealous guard her bed.

But ice her entrance did blockade,
‡‡And wind it kept the waters back,
So that a child could almost wade
‡‡Across the brink of cataract.

Source: McIntyre, James. Poems of James McIntyre.  Ingersoll: The Chronicle, 1889.

Biography of James McIntyre in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Read When Niagara Falls Ran Dry on the Niagara Falls Museums’ website

An Address to the Body of a Man in the Whirlpool — Niagara by Emily Thornton Charles

charles
Emily Thornton Charles

Ah, how ceaseless the rounds which, in darkness and gloom,
Thou hast made in the noisy confines of thy tomb,
‡‡‡‡‡Since the whirlpool so great,
‡‡‡‡‡Like a maelstrom of fate,
‡‡‡‡‡Did fiercely surround thee.
‡‡‡‡‡Drew downward and drowned thee.
‡‡‡‡‡Thou shrieked but none heard thee.
‡‡‡‡‡It beat thee and stirred thee,
‡‡‡‡‡Despoiled thee of breath,
‡‡‡‡‡And whirled thee to death.
Rising up, sinking down, with a thundering sound,
Thou art lashed by its fury around and around.
‡‡‡‡‡Now to sight thou art lost ;
‡‡‡‡‡Like a bubble art tossed
‡‡‡‡‡By the torrent’s strong clasp,
‡‡‡‡‡By the raging wave’s grasp,
‡‡‡‡‡Ever round and around,
‡‡‡‡‡Whilst the thundering sound
‡‡‡‡‡Ringeth still on deaf ears,
‡‡‡‡‡As it did ere you drowned.
Who, alas, were thy friends who must mourn thy sad fate ?
And how many are made, by thy death, desolate ?
Idle questions we ask, for we never shall know
Who was tossed by these waves, or in depths thrust below,
‡‡‡‡‡Now so fast and now slow,
As the wild gleaming whirlpool compels thee to go ;
‡‡‡‡‡Now a hand, or a foot
‡‡‡‡‡Close incased in a boot,
‡‡‡‡‡But a glimpse of a face —
So quickly it vanished — all too quickly to trace
Or to search out its features. Oh, terrible jest !
It is said, after death, that the body finds rest ;
Finds rest ! Seest thou thine ? It is whirling about
From the great seething caldron no more to get out.
Didst e’er fancy a fate like to this — that thou must
Be beaten and pounded, as ’twere hastened to dust,
‡‡‡‡‡With a din and a roar
‡‡‡‡‡Like the cannon’s outpour ?
‡‡‡‡‡For an instant didst think,
‡‡‡‡‡As thou stoodst on the brink
And looked on the rapids, that whene’er thou wert dead
They would grind thee to dust for Niagara’s bed ?
‡‡‡‡‡For it will not be long
‡‡‡‡‡Ere the eddying throng —
Waves we read of in story and picture in song —
Fiercely dash thee to pieces with shriek or deep groan —
Even droppings of water will wear away stone—
They will rend thy limp limbs, and will tear them apart ;
Will reach to thy vitals ; they will pluck out thy heart,
‡‡‡‡‡Until no one can see
‡‡‡‡‡What resemblance there be
‡‡‡‡‡Or a vestige in thee
‡‡‡‡‡Of a being who once was a mortal like me !

Source: Emily Thornton Charles.  Lyrical Poems, Songs, Pastorals, Roundelays, War Poems, Madrigals. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1887

Emily Thornton Charles had previously published the book Hawthorn Blossoms under the name Emily Hawthorne

Read about Emily Thornton Charles

“Not a great poem, but written in an interesting and buoyant style” — Charles Mason Dow

At Niagara by John Savage

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡THE RAPIDS.

savage
Portrait of John Savage.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡I.
In broken lines, like ghosts of buried nations,
‡‡Struggling beneath their white and tangled palls,
They leap and roar to Earth their exaltations,
‡‡And Earth e’en trembles as each spectre falls.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡II.
With strength that gives solemnity to clangour,
‡‡With quaint immensity that strangles mirth,
Like mortal things they roar to time their anger,
‡‡Like things immortal they disdain the Earth.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡III.
They bound—as dallying in their gorgeous West,
‡‡In forest cradles and in parent mountains,
They heard old Ocean throb his regal breast
‡‡And call his vassals—the cascades and fountains.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡IV.
From crag to crag they leap and spread the sound,
‡‡Through gorge and wood their flashing banners motion,
Till here in frantic rivalry they bound,
‡‡These mighty white-plumed cohorts, for the ocean.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡V.
Surging along the pale battalions muster,
‡‡Crowding each other, till the strongest springs
A-top his fellows, with heroic lustre,
‡‡And dares the deeds, like Viking, that he sings.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡VI.
Like men, the Rapids, born amid restless valor,
‡‡Flash o’er their foes with many a frothened spasm,
And linking all in pomp’s majestic pallor,
‡‡Leap like ten thousand Romans down the chasm !

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡———————
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡THE FALLS.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡I.

There is an awful eloquence around—
‡‡Like earthquake underneath the dreamful pillows
Of some great town, that deemed its strength profound,
‡‡And wakes on worse than frantic Ocean’s billows.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡II.
The mists, like shadowy cathedrals rise,
‡‡And through the vapory cloisters prayers are pouring :
Such as ne’er sprang to the eternal skies,
‡‡From old Earth’s passionate and proud adoring.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡III.
There is a voice of Scripture in the flood,
‡‡With solemn monotone of glory bounding,
Making all else an awe-hushed solitude
‡‡To hear its everlasting faith resounding.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡IV.
There is a quiet on my heart like death,
‡‡My eyes are gifted with a strange expansion,
As if they closed upon my life’s last breath,
‡‡And oped to measure the eternal mansion.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡V.
I see so much I fear to trust my vision,
‡‡I hear so much I doubt my mortal ear,
I feel so much, my soul in strong submission
‡‡Bends in a silent, death-like rapture here.

Source: John Savage. Faith and Fancy.  New York: James B. Kirker, 1864

Read about John Savage

Anchored to the Infinite by Edwin Markham

anchored
Kite Flying Contest Held To Get The First Line Across The Gorge For The Suspension Bridge.
by Donna Marie Campbell. Image courtesy of the Niagara Falls Public Library

The builder who first bridged Niagara’s gorge,
Before he swung his cable, shore to shore,
Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite
Bearing a slender cord for unseen hands
To grasp upon the further cliff and draw
A greater cord, and then a greater yet;
Till at the last across the chasm swung
The cable — then the mighty bridge in air!

So we may send our little timid thought
Across the void, out to God’s reaching hands —
Send out our love and faith to thread the deep—
Thought after thought until the little cord
Has greatened to a chain no chance can break,
And we are anchored to the Infinite!

Source:  Markham, Edwin, The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems; the Third Book of Verse. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, Page & Co., 1915.

The Niagara Suspension Bridge was the first bridge to span the Niagara River, and was in service from 1848-1855. To get the initial cable across, a kite flying contest, pictured above, was held. Contestants used the prevailing westerly winds to fly the kites from the Canadian to the American site. 13 year old Homan Walsh won the contest. Progressively larger strings and cables were tied to the kite string and pulled across until cables could be anchored to either side and bridge construction could begin.

Untitled by T.J.R.

table
The title page of the Table Rock Album

Should cruel fate, by some unconquer’d spell,
Consign our bodies, souls and all, to hell,
May falls like these be sent there too,
To drown us out of such a monstrous stew.

August 25, 1849

Source: Table Rock Album and Sketches of the Falls and Scenery Adjacent. Buffalo: Steam Press of Thomas and Lathrops, copyright by Jewett, Thomas & Co.,1856c.1848

This link takes you to the scanned version of  the 1855 version of Table Rock Album from the Hathi Trust

See the Table of Contents of the Table Rock Album on this site.