Niagara Falls by Jasper Barnett Cowdin

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡I.

Solemnly, slowly, the vast weight of falling
‡‡Waters the voice of a spirit immortal
‡‡Drowns, — and he stands, as a Heaven’s great portal,
Humbled in sight of his low earthly calling.
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Man hath no glory here;
‡‡Watching in silence thy soul-waking wonder,
‡‡O Niagara! — hearing thy thunder,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Pride must not come near.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡II.

Daily the magical gold incandescent
‡‡Sun makes thee glimmer, a gold-falling shower :
‡‡Nightly the silver-clad moon tries her power,
Changing thy dense rain of gems to liquescent
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Moonlight, that sparkling falls
‡‡In goblets upheld by spray-queens at revel,
‡‡Who shout with delight at the white downheaval
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡On their frail mist halls.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡III.

At the first shadowy dawn, when an angel
‡‡Looked from the shadow-land first on earth’s glory.
‡‡Eager to tell thy magnificent story,
Thou had’st already begun thine evangel.
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Sheer from the cliff, half mist,
‡‡Thy waters leapt with the lightness of passion —
‡‡Leapt to the lake, and in amorous fashion
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Its blue bosom kissed.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡IV.

They saw the experiment trial of sunrise
‡‡Waken the young, dewy lids of the morning;
‡‡Witnessed the sun’s rude attempt at adorning
His western cloud-canopy, taught by the One wise,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Great Artist in color;
‡‡Saw the strange moon look down in white wonder,
‡‡While, through the night watches, rolled the deep thunder
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Richer and fuller.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡V.

Time from his cradle-song went to the reaping; —
‡‡Onward the centuries roll to their falling
‡‡Into Oblivion’s deep. Yet appalling
As ever, thy power, its wild youth keeping,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Thunder and smoke downpours! —
‡‡Far from Ontario, recreant wooer!
‡‡But sending thy voice and white kisses to her
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Through thy sculptured shores.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡VI.

Who were the mystical sons of creation
‡‡First to discover, bow down and adore thee,
‡‡Long ere the Indian, awestruck before thee,
Heard from the tall rock thy weird incantation?
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Monstrous forms of wild life
‡‡Came from the deep savage forest to listen;
‡‡Fearless gray eagles, with wings all a-glisten,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Plunged amid thy strife!

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡VII

Vanished the Mound Builders, leaving dim traces
‡‡Of their past glory; the Indian faded —
‡‡His long-fallen armies slumber degraded
Along thy murmuring shores — and weird faces
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Rapid Fancy can see,
‡‡Countless and brown as the leaves of November:
‡‡Mingled they lie with the mammal’s white member
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡And fossil of tree.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡VIII

Chant of the cataract, never out-dying,
‡‡Voice like the Deathless One, constantly sending
‡‡Music far down the dim canyon, soft blending
With dreams of the dead in the vale low-lying —
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Grown accustomed to hear
‡‡Thy soothing lullaby through the long ages,
‡‡The thrilled cyclopean forms of old sages
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Lend a throbbing ear.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡IX.

Should thy wild avalanche pause for a season,
‡‡Dim crowding faces would start up from slumber,
‡‡Out from long galleries look without number,
Anxiously look up the gorge for the reason
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Of this, their strange unrest;
‡‡Wondering at the dead silence around them,
‡‡Grumbling at the rude shock which unbound them
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡And left them unblest.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡X.

Dies not thy deafening peal of divineness,
‡‡Till the dread trumpeter from his high station
‡‡Calls for the curtain of black desolation
To cover the world and its tragical finis
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡In the night-hush of death.
‡‡Dread the solemnity, then, of all regions,
‡‡The world-drama ended, its skeleton legions
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Sleeping without breath.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡XI.

Now is thy triumph-hour, crescent of madness!
‡‡Sweeping terrific in lofty descension
‡‡Down on my weak speck of humbled pretension,
Crushed like a swallow and drowned in thy gladness,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Lost under mightiest wave! —
‡‡Struggling yet bravely to keep my immortal
‡‡Spark in full sight, lest I faint at the portal
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Of my vanquished grave.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡XII.

Frail my mortality looks in thy presence;
‡‡Yet if I deemed that the God of all glory
‡‡Cared more for thee and thy wonderful story
Than for my handful of dust, all my pleasance
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡With Him would be at jar.
‡‡Off and away with the sorrowful presage!
‡‡The Man-God whispers within me this message:
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡“Thou art dearer far.”

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡XIII.

At the euthanasy-hour of creation
‡‡Thou shalt behold the last picture unfolden,
‡‡The sun’s masterpiece on his cloud-canvas golden.
His last grand splendor of gold and carnation,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡While my blind dust sleeps on —
‡‡Thou shalt be dead when I waken ecstatic!
‡‡Thy sun-given arch of glory prismatic
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Fade before my crown!

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡XIV

When the earth’s jewel-kin cease from their shining.
‡‡Perished the light over valley and river,
‡‡Thou shalt be silent, oh, silent forever,
Ere my long pæan hath scarce had beginning!
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Around the song-swept SHRINE
‡‡No hint of thy littleness ever shall wander,
‡‡Impressive, jubilant thunders, far grander,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Fall from lips divine!

Source: Jasper Barnett Cowdin. Ripple Brook; Niagara Falls: Two Poems. Brooklyn: D.S. Holmes, Publisher, 1886.

Cowdin is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Port Jefferson, New York

See the book in Google Books

The Bridge Builder by Maxine Kumin

June 17, 1848. Charles Ellet, Jr., the civil engineer who designed the suspension bridge soon to be built over Niagara Falls, today tested the service span to be used in its construction by driving his horse across the planking. – Brooklyn Eagle

I, Charles Ellet, Jr., licensed engineer
son of a provident Quaker farmer
now stand at the gorge where Niagara Falls

offers a prospect so sublime no rival
as yet is known on this great globe of ours.
Let men deride me as actor, rainmaker;

let it be said of me that I have loved
all carriageways and catwalks, all defiles
wide gaps and narrow verges to be bridged

am fond of women and horses equally
although the latter’s sensibility
is plainer far to read. However much

respect I hold for Nature’s rash downrush
her virginal ebullience, I itch
to take it in the compass of my fingers.

One does not “break” a horse, but wins its trust.
With towers and cables, not brute trusses;
with tact, not tug; suspension, not piled piers

I mean to overarch this wild splendor.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡* * *

Let them think me odd who see as if
asleep my silent self reflecting how
to span the rapids boiling at my feet

two hundred forty feet below the cliff
to be exact. An arrow from a bow?
A bird or a balloon? Why not a kite?

A kite could soar across the open rift!
The public loves such deeds. I’ll offer a prize,
a decent sort of prize, say five gold dollars

to the first man or boy who sends his string
to Canada.** The placard up three days
a local gap-toothed lad steps forth to win —

a widow’s son, shy skinny Homan Walsh.
He’s going to outlive me. Will he grow
up bold, race Thoroughbreds, get rich

performing acts of wild derring-do?
I don’t at this point know, nor know that
I’m to die a colonel in the Civil War

a hero slain leading a charge of rams
— warships rigged to ram opponents’ hulls —
on The Big Muddy to rout the Confederates.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡* * *

Backward looks are licensed. To look for-
ward isn’t done; is not acceptable.
But give me leave to leap beyond the date

of my flamboyance, 1848,
and introduce High-Jumping Sam: Sam Patch
clad all in white, who dives from the cliff into

the rainbowed pool at the foot of the cataract
and not content with one dive, makes it two.
Reprises at Genesee and straightway drowns.

Or Blondin in ’59 adored by thousands
who cheer his tightrope walk across the chasm.
He’ll have a score of successors, circus clowns

who mock the danger, simulate cold fear
half-fall, recover and go blithely on
some piggyback, some skipping rope, afire

with the same lust for fame and fortune
as those who dare chute down the drop in barrels.
The first a cooper proving his staves would hold

then scores of imitators taking the falls
by barrel, boat and cork, a steady parade
of madmen. And always the suicides . . .

Dramatic death! Love also knows no season.
Though bliss be brief that attends unbridled passion
romantic couples will hasten by canal

or rail to flaunt their ecstatic portion
fulfill the fleeting period of joy
that one wag titles “honey-lunacy.”

Some say the falls gently distract the lovers’
overweening focus on one another.
Some say the tumult of the cataract

conceals the newlyweds’ embarrassment
caught, as it were, in the rapturous nuptial act.
Others aver the falls’ ceaseless descent

evokes a rich manly response. Some brides
claim happy negative ions are produced
by falling water. You may take your choice

of savants, sages and hypotheses
but thus Niagara will come to boast
hotels and curio shops and carriage-rides

to vistas for photos of the just-now wived.
Skeptic I am, unmarried by design.
Still, might not the spectacle conjoin

male and female qualities into one?

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡* * *

Now let us turn back from this clairvoyant
glimpse to the day that Homan’s kite string held.
I tie it to a somewhat stouter cord

and next, a heavier one of finespun wire
and ever-mightier cables to support stout
wooden planks until from shore to shore,

just wide enough to let a phaeton pass,
a catwalk spans the gorge. The boards are spaced
to let rainwater through. Side rails? None.

I test it harshly across and back, first at
a walk, then jog, then crow-hop up and down
assured that it will hold. Once I trust it

I harness up my mare, to show she will.
A chestnut Morgan, foaled in my own barn
and trained to voice commands the way a skilled

driving horse need be, to keep from harm.
Vixen by name but not by temperament,
spirited, willing and confident.

Do not mistake submission, the highest
accolade man can bestow on a horse,
with truckling subservience. The mare must trust

the steady justice of the driver’s hand.
Fingers that speak, not snatch; a voice
that soothes and urges but withholds choice.

Vixen and I prepare to take our stand.
I stand up in the cart as in a chariot
the better she may sense we are allied

and ask her to move off at a rapid trot.
She never casts a glance to either side.
The crowd is aghast. Several women swoon.

The catwalk sways most fearfully but holds
beneath the mare and horseman in the sky
and that is how we cross, Vixen, my bold

partner, and I, Charles Ellet, Jr.,
bridge builder, licensed engineer.

**The kites were actually flown from Canada to the United States using the prevailing westerly winds.

Source: Kumin, Maxine. “The Bridge Builder.” TriQuarterly, Winter 1995, p. 162-166.

Also published in her 11th book of poems, Connecting the Dots, Norton, 1996

Maxine Kumin (June 6, 1925 – February 6, 2014) was an American author and poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1973. She was the Library of Congress Poet Laureate for 1981-1982

Niagara River and Falls by The Bard of Niagara (J.B. Waid)

Pleasant, peaceful, quiet river,
Limpid, constant, onward ever,
    Gentle waters roll away ;
Calm as summer, bright as morning,
Not a look, or sign of warning,
    Naught of danger dost thou say,
But gliding along, mild and strong,
               To the Rapids.
                    Then
Sporting, murm'ring, tossing, splashing,
Storming, raving, crossing, dashing,
    Troubled waters fret away ;
Hasting, pushing, staving, darting,
Islands mad'ning thee to parting,
    Yet thy tumult cannot stay;
But, tearing along, mad and strong,
               To the chasm.
                    Then
Curving, bending, bursting, breaking,
Sliding, leaping, rushing, quaking,
    Flying waters dart away ;
Flashing, sparkling, wailing, rumbling,
O'er the brink an ocean tumbling,
    To a world of foam and spray,
Fierce shooting along, proud and strong,
               We see thee now
                     In
Stately grandeur, awful wonder,
Hear thy voice in terms of thunder;
    Falling waters roar away,
Pouring, showering, misting, streaming,
Rob'd in rainbow colors beaming,
    Deck'd by Sol's, or Luna's ray,
Swift plunging along, grand and strong,
               To the bottom.
                    Then
Foaming, boiling, surging, thrashing,
Breaching, swelling, heaving, crashing,
    Furious waters foam away,
Babbling, roaring, brawling, curling,
Gurgling, wailing, whisking, whirling ;
    Fanciful thy currents play,
Still pressing along, bold and strong,
               Dimpling, pouting.
                    Then
Gathering, kissing, whispering, hushing,
Panting, smiling, frisking, rushing,
    Lovely waters roll away ;
Winding, eddying, purling, playing,
Lakeward still, and never staying,
    Rustling on thy shining way ;
Free coursing along, calm and strong,
               Soon to mingle
                    With
Ontario's tideless waters—
Long to be thy prison quarters ;
    Noble river die away.
But I err, a poet's blunder,
Still I hear thy deaf'ning thunder ;
    Here thou art, and here must stay
World-wide wonder, mighty, strong
      Niagara !

Source: J.B. Waid. Variety : Poetry and Prose. Montreal : J. Lovell, 1872.
Waid, born 1804, was (self?)styled The Bard of Niagara

The Niagara River by Elsie Stevens

stevens

How many ages did it thunder
This gathering of four inland seas,
Rushing onward to the ocean,
Through a maze of forest trees?

Three hundred years have come and gone
Since Hennepin recorded the scene,
“It was like an Alpine torrent” he wrote
How glorious it must have been.

In and along this winding river
History has been made,
Indians fighting for their country
White men for fame and trade.

The once great barrier now is harnessed,
To give home owners heat and light,
But in its primeval solitude
It was a wondrous sight.

Now there is no dense forest,
No bear, wolf or bounding deer,
But the meandering Niagara river,
Brings joy all through the year!

Source: RG 18, Women’s Literary Club of St. Catharines Fonds, 1892-1996, Brock University Archives, Brock University. [1978?]

Elsie Stevens was an active member of the Women’s Literary Club of St. Catharines for many years.

A note on the date: Stevens refers to 300 years “since Hennepin recorded the scene.” Hennepin was in Niagara in December, 1678.

The Cormorant by Keith Inman

inman

She sailed
over the thundering
water to hover

in the rising plume
of a million mirrors glinting
with sunlight

as the ever-wall
of water fell
like a trick of curtains
and hidden doors

she was gone.

From our table rock view
we scanned the vast
crescent down
to where rapids eased
into churned foam

and there
bare-rolling to the surface
she bobbed
shaking her feathers out

bowing the fish in her beak
to the light.

The Cormorant by Keith Inman. Read by Oliver Porteus

Source: The Author, 2019

Inman‘s favourite lit class was in Ireland (on Joyce); best reading, a cafe in Spain; coolest invite, LA; most interesting editor, from Malta (NY based). Keith started writing over 30 years ago, attending writing courses and programs through Niagara libraries and institutions. His work has won multiple awards and grants. Two of his books, ‘The War Poems’, and ‘SEAsia’, both from Black Moss Press, can be found in major libraries across North America and in Europe. Home is Thorold, where ships climb the continent.

The Cormorant is one of the poems on the Poetry Walking Tour of Niagara Falls

Category: Niagara River Poetry

Niagara Falls by Jasper Barnett Cowdin

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The Bridge Builder by Maxine Kumin

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Niagara River and Falls by The Bard of Niagara (J.B. Waid)

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The Niagara River by Elsie Stevens

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The Cormorant by Keith Inman

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