Category: Religious poetry

Niagara (1835 version) by Lydia Huntley Sigourney

sigourney
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
1791-1865
by Augustus Washington, 1855

 

 

Flow on for ever, in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty !   God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
Mantled around thy feet.   And he doth give
The voice of thunder power to speak of Him
Eternally — bidding the lip of man
Keep silence,  and upon thy rocky altar pour
Incense of awe-struck praise.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡And who can dare
To lift the insect trump of earthly Hope,
Or Love, or Sorrow, — ‘mid the peal sublime
Of thy tremendous hymn? — E’en Ocean shrinks
Back from thy brotherhood, and his wild waves
Retire abashed. —  For he doth sometimes seem
To sleep like a spent laborer, and recall
His wearied billows from their vexing play,
And lull them in a cradle calm : — but thou,
With everlasting, undecaying tide,
Dost rest not, night or day.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡The morning stars,
When first they sang o‘er young Creation‘s birth,
Heard thy deep anthem — and those wrecking fires
That wait th’ Archangel‘s signal to dissolve
The solid Earth, shall find Jehovah‘s name
Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears,
On thine unfathomed page.   Each leafy bough,
That lifts itself within thy proud domain,
Doth gather greenness from thy living spray,
And tremble at the baptism.   Lo!  yon birds
Do venture boldly near, bathing their wing
Amid thy foam and mist. — ‘Tis meet for them
To touch thy garment‘s hem, — or lightly stir
The snowy leaflets of thy vapour wreath, —
Who sport unharmed upon the fleecy cloud,
And listen at the echoing gate of Heaven,
Without reproof.   But, as for us, — it seems
Scarce lawful with our broken tones, to speak
Familiarly of thee.   Methinks, to tint
Thy glorious features with our pencil‘s point,
Or woo thee to the tablet of a song,
Were profanation.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Thou dost make the soul
A wandering witness of thy majesty ;
And while it rushes with delirious joy
To tread thy vestibule, dost chain its step,
And check its rapture, with the humbling view
Of its own nothingness — bidding it stand
In the dread presence of th’ Invisible,
As if to answer to its God through thee.

Signed L.H.S., Hartford, Conn.

Source: Parsons, Horatio A.  A Guide to Travelers Visiting the Falls of Niagara.  2nd ed., greatly enlarged.  Buffalo: O.G. Steele, 1835

Page from Sangster’s “Our Land Illustrated in Art & Song”

Also published in Tunis’s Topographical and Pictorial Guide to Niagara. Niagara Falls. W.E. Tunis, Publisher, 1855 under the title Apostrophe to Niagara

The first stanza was also published in Sangster, Charles, ed. Our Land Illustrated in Art & Song.  Toronto: Toronto Willard Tract Depository, 1887. 

Also published in: Holley, George W., ed.  The Falls of Niagara.  Baltimore: A.C. Armstrong & Son, 1883

Also published in  Johnson, Richard L. (ed).  Niagara: Its History, Incidents and Poetry. Washington: Walter Neale General Book Publisher, 1898

 

Read about Lydia Huntley Sigourney

See the 1901 version of this poem

The Falls of Niagara by Edward Hartley Dewart

dewart
Edward Hartley Dewart
1828-1856
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

ERE yet I saw the wild magnificence,
Which Nature here with peerless pomp unveils,
A solemn sound—a stern and sullen roar—
By which the earth was tremulously thrilled—
Kindled a flush of deep, expectant joy,
Quickening the pulses of my throbbing heart,
And tingling through my veins like fire. But now,
While standing on this rocky ledge, above
The vast abyss, which yawns beneath my feet,
In silent awe and rapture, face to face
With this bright vision of unearthly glory,
Which dwarfs all human pageantry and power,
This spot to me is Nature’s holiest temple.
The sordid cares, the jarring strifes, and vain
Delights of earth are stilled. The hopes and joys
That gladden selfish hearts, seem nothing here.

The massy rocks that sternly tower aloft,
And stem the fury of the wrathful tide—
The impetuous leap of the resistless flood,
An avalanche of foaming, curbless rage—
The silent hills, God’s tireless sentinels—
The wild and wondrous beauty of thy face,
Which foam and spray forever shroud, as if
Like thy Creator, God, thy glorious face
No mortal eye may see unveiled and live—
Are earthly signatures of power divine.
O! what are grandest works of mortal art,
Column, or arch, or vast cathedral dome,
To these majestic foot-prints of our God!

Unique in majesty and radiant might,
Earth has no emblems to portray thy splendor.
Not loftiest lay of earth-born bard could sing,
All that thy grandeur whispers to the heart
That feels thy power. No words of mortal lips
Can fitly speak the wonder, reverence, joy—
The wild imaginings, thrilling and rare,
Which now, like spirits from some higher sphere,
For whom no earthly tongue has name or type,
Sweep through my soul in waves of surging thought.
My reason wrestles with a vague desire
To plunge into thy boiling foam, and blend
My being with thy wild sublimity.
As thy majestic beauty sublimates
My soul, I am ennobled while I gaze—
Warm tears of pensive joy gush from my eyes,
And grateful praise and worship silent swell,
Unbidden, from my thrilled and ravished breast;
Henceforth this beauteous vision shall be mine—
Daguerreotyped forever on my heart.

Stupendous power! thy thunder’s solemn hymn
Whose tones rebuke the shallow unbeliefs
Of men, is still immutably the same.
Ages ere mortal eyes beheld thy glory,
Thy waves made music for the listening stars,
And angels paused in wonder as they passed,
To gaze upon thy weird and awful beauty,
Amazed to see such grandeur this side heaven.
Thousands, who once have here enraptured stood,
Forgotten, lie in death’s lone pulseless sleep;
And when each beating heart on earth is stilled,
Thy tide shall roll, unchanged by flight of years,
Bright with the beauty of eternal youth.

Thy face, half-veiled in rainbows, mist, and foam,
Awakens thoughts of all the beautiful
And grand of earth, which stand through time and change
As witnesses of God’s omnipotence.
The misty mountain, stern in regal pride,
The birth-place of the avalanche of death—
The grand old forests, through whose solemn aisles
The wintry winds their mournful requiems chant—
The mighty rivers rushing to the sea—
The thunder’s peal—the lightning’s awful glare—
The deep, wide sea, whose melancholy dirge,
From age to age yields melody divine—
The star-lit heavens, magnificent and vast,
Where suns and worlds in quenchless splendor blaze—
All terrible and beauteous things create
Are linked in holy brotherhood with thee,
And speak in tones above the din of earth
Of Him unseen, whose word created all.

God of Niagara! Fountain of life!
At whose omnific word the universe
Arose; whose love upholds all worlds, and guides
Each orb in its mysterious path through space;
Around whose throne the Morning-stars of light
Bend low in wondering adoration, or
With lofty hymns of love and joy proclaim
Thy power and grace, boundless—immutable!
I, a poor erring worm of earth, a child
Of sin, am all unworthy to behold
This faint reflection of thy glorious power:
How, then, can I approach thy glorious throne,
Or dare to breathe in thine offended ear
The wants and woes of my polluted heart?

Father of mercy! hear my trembling prayer!
To me let love and light divine be given,
To guide my erring feet in paths of truth,
And purify my dark and sin-stained heart;
That while I muse upon thy glorious works,
And mark the tokens of thy presence here,
I may behold Thyself, and find in Thee
My strength, my light, my everlasting Friend.

Source:  Edward Hartley Dewart.  Songs of Life: A Collection of Poems.  Toronto: Dudley & Burns, Printers, 1869

Biography of Dewart

Dewart

Niagara Visited in Autumn by Gurdon Huntington

huntington
Table Rock, Niagara, 1867, by Edward Ruggles. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

Here in great Nature’s gorgeous fane we stand,
Where grand libation endlessly is poured,
And incense soars aloft forevermore :
Th’ Almighty King the offering receives,
And on the rising cloud of homage hangs
His bow of promise and of grace.
How fair and gladdening ( as a dream of love
And of the pure, fond bliss of childhood’s hours
To the mind torn and tortured by stern grief
And vexed by sullen gusts of wild despair, )
Shines near the foaming, furious cataract,
This promise writ in rich-hued beams of light !
Here swells in Nature’s temple thro’ all years
Her hymn of praise, while sound the thunder-tones
Of her great organ builded not by man,
Shaking the bases and the rock-reared walls.
The rich, dark evergreens with icy fringe
Hang sparkling now beside the dread abyss.
They seem like a swarthy queen in jewel’d gear,
With divers prized and fond attendants by,
As Cleopatra decking for the step
Adown the fearful steeps of death to realms
Of mist and shades.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡How beautiful yon grove
In all the wildness and the majesty
Of Nature’s primitive growth ! Rich mosses wrapt
Around the noble trunks are velvety
In colors brightened and bedewed with spray.
The tiny flower which blooms upon the sod,
Like it, is freshened in the flying mists
Which breathe their welcome day-dews thro’ these trees :
And hence, we, charmed with matchless beauty, learn
True greatness hath a ministry of love,
E’en for the humble and obscure, as for
The gorgeous and the stately in their hour
Of need and décadence.

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Yon beetling cliffs
Which dark and dizzy, rise above the flood,
Adorned with crimson , pendent trees like vines,
Graceful and young , are types of strength,
The glorious architecture of a hand
Divine and infinite in power. And here,
Below the falling sheet, where foams the flood
With ceaseless roar and ever furious gusts
of rack and wind, — in this dim cave
The poet well might feign the genius fair
of this enchanting, gorgeous spot had shone
At twilight when no other eye beheld ;
As beamed the bright nymph thro’ the sparkling spray
Unto the eye of Manfred ’mid the wild, —
Th’ embodied, rich – hued glory of the scene.
If here the spirit of the Indian brave
Dwelleth amid the flying mists of the mad
And fearful cataract, ( its grander traits
Conspiring in his stern , etherial shape ; )
Forth from the poet’s imaged sprite doth glow
The light, the hues, the fresh , eternal charm
Of waters and of rocks and moss and flowers,
Of sun-bows and of foam-washed crystals clear,
The sparkle and the rich and bloomy grace
Which in the lovelier features of the scene
Adorn the spot as Nature’s glorious shrine.
This noble gem of scenic beauty set
Upon the swelling breast of Earth, hath, too ,
Its fair and delicate chasings as surroundings meet.

Source: Rev. Gurdon Huntington. The Shadowy Land, and Other Poems.  New York: James Miller, 1861.

From Rev. E.B. Huntington. A Genealogical Memoir of the Huntington Family in This Country, Embracing All the Known Descendents of Simon and Margaret Huntington.  Stamford, Conn.: The Author, 1863

GURDON, born Nov. 27, 1818, graduated at Hamilton College, 1838.
Ordained deacon of the Prot. Episcopal church, July 2, 1848, and presbyter, April 14, 1851. He was invited to Simmonsville, and Spraguesville, R. I., in 1848, from which post he went to Pottersville, N. Y., May, 1850. Called to Christ’s church, Sackett’s Harbor, N. Y., April 6, 1852, and to Sag Harbor, June 11, 1856, where he is now engaged. He has devoted much of his time to literature, and from early in his course, as student, has used a ready and skillful pen. His contributions to our poetic literature have been quite numerous, among which are the ” Shadowy Land,” now in press; “The Guests of Brazil;” ” The Romance of the Indian Country and its Tribes;” ” Washington at the Battle of Princeton;” “The Watery World;” ” The Mohawk River;” “Tuxedo Lake;” ” Genevieve ;” “Musings at Evening Hours ;” ” Child of Immortality;” “The Steamship.” Three of his poems, on public occasions, have also been printed: on ” Confidence and Affection,” &c. ; “Dignity and Triumphs of Mental and Moral Culture;” “Providence ;” and a prose essay on “The Conditions and Materials of Poetry.” His poem at the Huntington meeting, Sept. 3, 1857, appears in this book. He was married, Jan. 22, 1852, to Sarah Gold Sill, who died in Sag Harbor, Jan. 31, 1858. He married, the second time, Oct. 25, 1859, Miss Charlotte Marsh Sill, of Rome, N. Y.

Thoughts On Niagara by Michael McGuire

 

mcguire
Niagara Falls: From the Canada Side.
Currier & Ives, 1856 (?). Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

I stood where swift Niagara pours its flood
Into the darksome caverns where it falls,
And heard its voice, as voice of God, proclaim
The power of Him, who let it on its course
Commence, with the green earth’s first creation ;
And I was where the atmosphere shed tears,
As giving back the drops the waters wept,
On reaching that great sepulchre of floods, —
Or bringing from above the bow of God,
To plant its beauties in the pearly spray.

And as I stood and heard, though seeing nought,
Sad thoughts took deep possession of my mind,
And rude imagination venturing forth,
Did toil to pencil, though in vain, that scene,
Which, in its every feature, spoke of God.
Oh, voice of nature ! full of strength and awe; —
Unceasing sermon, where Omnipotence
Is at once the theme and illustration.
O thou pervading sound !  o’erwhelming all
With vast conceptions of might infinite !
Hallow my inspirations, and subdue
Whatever in me jars with holy thought.
Let thy loud tones speak to my inmost soul,
And teach it ever to acknowledge God.

Full of thyself, great flood, how vain the task
To tell thy might, or adequately know
How vast thou art, — so very small are we !
If such the thoughts are which thy voice stirs up,
Then what the awe that would entrance the mind
At viewing thy dread strength, thy power sublime!
Or beauty that o’ertops the highest range
Of boldest fancy, whose most lofty flight
Would fall beneath thee far, and much abashed.
Oh place most sacred ! full of awe and God !
Where every sound, and all that’s seen, combine
To teach our minds to humbly trust in Him,
Whose fiat called, and who sustains the world.
O spot !  if any spot on earth can be
A temple, where Jehovah is felt most,
Raise my dejection, and enable me
To speak as may befit thee and myself ;
And teach me to address, in proper terms,
Him, for whose honor thou wast form’d to flow,
And talk forever of his power supreme.
O Thou, that givest all that we possess,
Whose might is infinite, and goodness, too,
Bend to my voice thy always ready ear,
And hearing grant, O grant my earnest prayer,
One which hypocrisy hath ne’er abused,
Nor has been by the drowsy formalist.
The verdant earth which thou hast made,
The sky through which the blazing sun doth ride,
And the moon with her large train make progress ;
These are thy works, which well assert thy might
And goodness, and addressing us, doth speak
Wherever culture rules or nature reigns.
Yet, sight of sky, of sea, or of the earth,
Of wild plant, or of cultivated flower,
Of quiet lake that sleeps in loveliness,
Wound in a belt of perfect solitude, —
Of streams that flow contented in their course,
And leave a legacy of flowers behind, —
Is not to me vouchsafed, — nor may I look
Upon the cataract’s unfetter’d rage,
That wildly hurries it to the abyss,
Which, like a gap in nature, waits the flood
Which, ever rolling, leaves it waiting still.
Of this, imagination tells alone !
Is forced to copy, oh, how faint transcribe,
Where all its paintings must be in itself,
Nature’s designer, and her artist, too.
For me, the world is black, and filled with gloom ;
Huge darkness sits recumbent on the air,
Oppressing it with universal night,
And making melancholy joys supplant,
Till cheerfulness removes from where gloom reigns,
Leaving the mind a prey to thoughts unblest.

And here, where Thou art ever felt to be,
Where nature loudly owns Thee as her God,
Whose praise is sounded by the cataract,
Hearken to me, and my petition hear,
As from each recess of my struggling soul,
The sighs of sickly hope, assembling fast,
Meet in a perfect flood of fervent prayer, —
Which all express’d is this, — Lord, give me sight: —
And that so long unheard, is unheard still.

Source:  Artman, Wm. and Hall, L.V.  Beauties and Achievements of the Blind.  Dansville, N.Y. : Published for the Authors, 1854

From Frank Severance’s Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier:

That Niagara’s supreme appeal to the emotions is not through the eye but through the ear, finds a striking illustration in “Thoughts on Niagara,” a poem of about eighty lines written prior to 1854 by Michael McGuire, a blind man. Here was one whose only impressions of the cataract came through senses other than that of sight. As is usual with the blind, he uses phrases that imply consciousness of light; yet to him as to other poets whose devotional natures respond to this exhibition of natural laws, all the phenomena merge in “the voice of God.”

The poem, which as a whole is far above commonplace, develops a pathetic prayer for sight; and employs much exalted imagery attuned to the central idea that here Omnipotence speaks without ceasing; here is
“A temple, where Jehovah is felt most.”

Niagara by William Wetmore Story

story
William Wetmore Story. From the Brady-Handy Collection in the Library of Congress

‡‡Like hell-hounds from their slumber waking,
And panting madly for their prey,
‡‡Their whitening manes in fury shaking,
And howling down their rocky way,
‡‡From Erie’s sleep, in rushing rapids breaking,
‡‡‡‡Storms down Niagara —
Wildly towards their dread abyss
Hurrying they rage, and foam, and hiss,
Over their shelving precipice ;
Yet pausing on those awful steeps,
‡‡Firm, solid, and compact,
With heavy plunge, and solemn anthem, sweeps
All — all — together in one emerald mass,
‡‡The thundering cataract ;
And evermore its solemn roar
Peals up the heavens, and down the shore —
While from the unremitting storm
‡‡Of seething foam below,
Rises the water’s ghostlike form,
‡‡In its shroud of foamy snow.

‡‡With thee the wrestling storm hath striven !
The wintry blast hath grasped thee by the mane !
And from the summer’s darkening heaven,
Plunging into thy breast its forked levin,
The thunder answered to thy call again ;
But undecaying in thy pauseless power,
Heedless of storm, and reckless of the hour,
Deep, deep, with everlasting trumpet-tone,
Thou soundest ever on !

‡‡A thousand harvests of the human race,
Hath Death’s keen sickle shorn,
Since thou wast in convulsions born ;
‡‡But like a passing mist across thy face,
Year follows year, and age succeeds to age,
And terrible as at thine hour of birth,
Thy hoary locks thou shakest wildly forth,
And scarless, in eternal youth, dost age.

‡‡Falling, falling, as if in huge despair,
Thy watery weight descends ;
‡‡Rising, rising, as Hope were even there,
To heaven again it tends ; —
And Faith her rainbow-bridge uprears
Upon the shattered spray of tears,
And o’er the roaring gulf its arch extends.

Strong as thou art, there is for thee an hour !
‡‡There is for thee a law !
Its limits an almighty power
‡‡Around thy strength can draw ;
Who forged the universe unto his will,
Can chain thy fury, bid thy storm be still ;
He who hath given paths unto the stars,
And meted to the universe its bound,
Who clothed thy being with the voice of wars,
Hath set thee thine appointed bound.
Thundering thou dashest on, with awful roar,
Yet bendest humbly to His stern decree ;
And thou unto His eye art nothing more
Than the frail swallows, that forever soar
Above thy terrors, by his law made free ;
Flames over thee, and all the fiery sword, —
Thou servest ! Thou art bondsman to the Lord !

Source: The Phi Beta Kappa Key, vol 3, no, 2 (January 1917)

Story, Harvard University Class of 1838, wrote this poem on July 6, 1843

Read about William Wetmore Story