Niagara by Joseph Rodman Drake

I.

niagara Drake
Portrait of Joseph Rodman Drake

Roar, raging torrent! and thou, mighty river,
Pour thy white foam on the valley below;
Frown, ye dark mountains! and shadow for ever
The deep rocky bed where the wild rapids flow.
The green sunny glade, and the smooth flowing fountain,
Brighten the home of the coward and slave;
The flood and the forest, the rock and the mountain,
Rear on their bosoms the free and the brave.

II.

Nurslings of nature, I mark your bold bearing,
Pride in each aspect and strength in each form,
Hearts of warm impulse, and souls of high daring,
Born in the battle and rear’d in the storm.
The red levin flash and the thunder’s dread rattle,
The rock-riven wave and the war trumpet’s breath,
The din of the tempest, the yell of the battle,
Nerve your steeled bosoms to danger and death.

III.

High on the brow of the Alps’ snowy towers
The mountain Swiss measures his rock-breasted moors,
O’er his lone cottage the avalanche lowers,
Round its rude portal the spring-torrent pours.
Sweet is his sleep amid peril and danger,
Warm is his greeting to kindred and friends,
Open his hand to the poor and the stranger,
Stern on his foeman his sabre descends.

IV.

Lo! where the tempest the dark waters sunder
Slumbers the sailor boy, reckless and brave,
Warm’d by the lighting and lulled by the thunder,
Fann’d by the whirlwind and rock’d on the wave;
Wildly the winter wind howls round his pillow,
Cold on his bosom the spray showers fall;
Creaks the strained mast at the rush of the billow,
Peaceful he slumbers, regardless of all.

V.

Mark how the cheek of the warrior flushes,
As the battle drum beats and the war torches glare;
Like a blast of the north to the onset he rushes,
And his wide-waving falchion gleams brightly in air.
Around him the death-shot of foemen are flying,
At his feet friends and comrades are yielding their breath;
He strikes to the groans of the wounded and dying,
But the war cry he strikes with is, ‘conquest or death!’

VI.

Then pour thy broad wave like a flood from the heavens,
Each son that thou rearest, in the battle’s wild shock,
When the death-speaking note of the trumpet is given,
Will charge like thy torrent or stand like thy rock.
Let his roof be the cloud and the rock be his pillow,
Let him stride the rough mountain, or toss on the foam,
He will strike fast and well on the field or the billow,
In triumph and glory, for God and his home!

Source: Joseph Rodman Drake The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems, New York: George Dearborn, 1836

In his book Papers and proceedings of the Drake Memorial Celebration, May 29, 1915 : together with a bibliography of the writings of Dr. Joseph Rodman Drake by Victor Hugo Paltsits he mentions that a manuscript notebook dated 1817 and entitled Trifles in Rhyme written by Joseph Rodman Drake includes the poem Niagara.

In 1835, H. Clinch published the two-stanza poem Niagara which is almost identical to the first and last (6th) stanzas of this poem.

See Drake’s other poem on this site, Niagara’s Everlasting Voice

Read about Joseph Rodman Drake

Niagara’s Everlasting Voice by Joseph Rodman Drake

Cover image from The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems
Cover image from The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems

How sweet ‘t would be, when all the air,
In moonlight swims along the river,
To couch upon the grass and hear
Niagara’s everlasting voice
Far in the deep blue West away;
That dreamy and poetic noise
We mark not in the glare of day —
Oh, how unlike its torrent-cry
When o’er the brink the tide is driven,
As if the vast and sheeted sky
In thunder fell from Heaven!

Source: Myron T. Prichard, comp. Poetry of Niagara. Boston: Lothrup Publishing Co., 1901

Originally published as part Fragment in Drake’s The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems, New York: George Dearborn, 1836

See Drake’s other poem on this site, Niagara

To a Flower by Alexander Wellington Crawford

(Found Some Years Ago at the Foot of Goat Island, Niagara)
To a Flower
Horseshoe Fall and Goat Island Seen from Table Rock by James Hope-Wallace. Courtesy Niagara Falls Public Library

I turned aside to pluck thee, sweetest flower,
From thy low bed, where, almost hid from sight,
Thou lay’st besieged by rocks, whose giant power
Was broken ere they reached thee with their might.

Thou grewest there, so tiny and alone,
Among the rocks that formed thy hardened bed;
And yet thou seem’st no sadness to have known,
For heaven’s blue had crowned thy tender head.

Thou wast the only flower that I could see —
The place around was ruinously bare;
And yet thou grewest there contentedly,
Although thou livedst on but rocky fare.

Thou only heardst the cataract’s fierce roar —
The torrents never reached thy rocky bed;
So thou wast safe, though near where fierce floods pour;
The spray but dashed upon thy bending head.

I found thee with thy sweetness hid away,
Far from my path upon the rocks beneath;
I clambered down to claim without delay
Thy slender beauty and thy fragrant breath.

Thou hast for me the tenderest memory,
For him, who was my comrade in those days;
Scarce can I meet until eternity,
When God brings him from India’s burning rays.

I hold thee as a treasure to my heart —
Thy life was so much like my own poor life;
For I, like thee, alone must do my part,
And stand unaided amidst rocks of strife.

And, like thee, may I pass my feeble day,
And never know the torrent’s deadly force;
But may just feel the invigorating spray,
And bless some traveller in his earthly course.

Source: Kevin McCabe, ed. The Poetry of Old Niagara. St. Catharines, Ont. : Blarney Stone Books, 1999.

Originally published in Crawford’s Poems of Yesterday  Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1924

The Cataract Isle by Christopher Pearse Cranch

The Emerald Isle by Christopher Pearse Cranch
Christopher Pearse Cranch

I wandered through the ancient wood
That crowns the cataract isle.
I heard the roaring of the flood
And saw its wild, fierce smile.

Through tall tree-tops the sunshine flecked
The huge trunks and the ground;
And the pomp of fullest summer decked
The island all around.

And winding paths led all along
Where friends and lovers strayed;
And voices rose with laugh and song
From sheltered nooks of shade.

Through opening forest vistas whirled
The rapids’ foamy flash,
As they boiled along and plunged and swirled,
And neared the last long dash.

I crept to the island’s outer verge,
Where the grand, broad river fell —
Fell sheer down mid foam and surge,
In a white and blinding hell!

The steady rainbow gayly shone
Above the precipice;
And a deep, low tone of a thunder-groan
Rolled up from the drear abyss.

And all the day sprang up the spray,
Where the broad, white sheets were poured,
And fell around in showery play,
Or upward curled and soared.

And all the night those sheets of white
Gleamed through the spectral mist,
When o’er the isle the broad moonlight
The wintry foam-flakes kissed.

Mirrored within thy dreamy thought,
I see it, feel it all, —
That island with sweet visions fraught,
That awful waterfall.

With sunflecked trees, and birds, and flowers,
The Isle of Life is fair:
But one deep voice thrills through its hours,
One spectral form is there, —

A power no mortal can resist,
Rolling forever on, —
A floating cloud, a shadowy mist,
Eternal undertone!

And through the sunny vistas gleam
The fate, the solemn smile;
Life is Niagara’s rushing stream;
Its dreams — that peaceful isle!

September, 1853

Source: Christopher Pearse Cranch. The Bird and the Bell, with Other Poems. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1875

Also published in Myron T. Pritchard, comp. Poetry of Niagara. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Co., 1901.

Also published in R. L. Johnson. Niagara: Its History, Incidents and Poetry Washington: W. Neale, 1898

Niagara by Joseph Hart Clinch

Describe Niagara!     Ah, who shall dare
Attempt the indescribable, and train
Thought‘s fragile wing to skim the heavy air,
Wet with the cataract‘s incessant rain?
The “glowing muse of fire“ invoked in vain
By Shakespeare, who shall hope from Heaven to win?
And “burning words“ alone become the strain,
Which to the mind would bring the awful din
Where seas in thunder fall, and eddying oceans spin.

Long had the savage on thy glorious shroud,
Fringed with vast foam-wreaths, gaz‘d with stoic eye
And deemed that on thy rising rainbow cloud
The wings of the Great Spirit hovered nigh;
And, as he marked the solemn woods reply
In echoes to thy rolling thunder tone,
He heard His voice upon the breeze go by,
And his heart bowed — for to the heart alone
God speaking through His works, makes what he utters known.

But ages passed away — and to the West
Came Europe‘s sons to seek for fame or gold;
And one, perchance, more daring than the rest,
Lured by the chase or by strange stories told
By Indian guide of oceans downward rolled,
Felt on his throbbing ear thy far-off roar,
Then sped the mighty wonder to behold,
Thy voice around him and thy cloud before,
Till breathless — trembling — rapt — he trod thy foaming shore.
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