‘Tis did—my braggin’ days is o’er,
I’ll brag of old SALT* now no more.
The look of pride which once I wore
Is gone, alas! my heart are tore ;
The proud, firm footstep, mine of yore
Are gone now, too, gone ; my eyes is sore,
And little scaldin’ tears does pour,
When I does think that old SALT’S roar,
Was made “considerable” lower,
Even at this very door.
The American Niagara Falls Undated postcard. The Bridal Veil Fall is to the right. Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
Greetings from the capital of love,
whose cataracts a punster might foretell.
Next time we come we’ll plan for a motel:
one afternoon is simply not enough.
Where other tourists see the Bridal Veil,
I watch the ghosts of buffalos herded off
a thousand cliffs by hunters. Gulls circle as if
they were white buzzards. They wait to no avail.
Sorry to be cynical, I buy
some souvenirs — small TV sets with slides of all
the sights in living color. The primal
screams are missing. The hunters had their alibi
but what is mine? Can I love a girl
afraid of every honeymoon’s cheap thrills,
like holding hands in public or acting like a fool?
Yours, of course, until Niagara Falls.
Source: Jennifer Rose. Hometime for an Hour: Poems. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006
American Falls From Goat Island, Niagara, 1908 Courtesy of the Library of Congress
A THOUSAND streams all gather into one ‡‡‡‡And in thy thunders sink :
Four mighty seas to thy dread margin run, ‡‡‡‡And dare thine awful brink .
The shock of cavalry in battle-sweep, ‡‡‡‡The might of war’s impact,
Are whispers, to the thunder o’er the steep ‡‡‡‡Of thy great cataract .
While yet there was no ear to hear thy moan ‡‡‡‡And all the earth was young,
Out on the lonely air thy monotone ‡‡‡‡Its deep vibrations flung .
The sun was painting rainbows on the mist ‡‡‡‡That veiled thy watery crown,
When fierce Cambyses staggered all the East ‡‡‡‡And trampled Egypt down.
Still boomed thy flood in ceaseless cannonade, ‡‡‡‡And seethed in yeasty foam,
When Goth and Vandal in destruction laid ‡‡‡‡The towers of ancient Rome .
Thy torrent breaks the adamantine rock ‡‡‡‡And hurls it from the height ;
The firm-knit earth cannot withstand the shock ‡‡‡‡Of thy propulsive might.
How wild the storm that ever downward sweeps ‡‡‡‡The whirlwind of thy foam,
How still the sky that all thy waters weeps ‡‡‡‡In raindrops from its dome.
Sublime and silent is that mighty force ‡‡‡‡That dwells within those forms
Whose wings of mist soar upward in their course ‡‡‡‡And veil thy breast in storms.
Howe’er resistlessly thy fury sweeps, ‡‡‡‡How vast soe’er thy powers,
In gravitation all thy glory sleeps, ‡‡‡‡Thy substance in the showers.
Source: Dr. D. A. Watson. The Wing of the Wild-Bird and Other Poems. Toronto: William Briggs, 1908
Niagara Falls from the Canadian Shore, ca.1900 Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
SEE the wave where it falls to the deep,
And the spray of the downpouring steep
Is outflung in a rain o’er the side !
We are filled with its splendor and pride,
We are mad with its pitiless power.
Ever-remembered, marvellous hour !
In view of the flooding waters yonder
Over our weakness must we ponder.
Endless, unwavering sweeps the tide,
Clouded with whiteness, over the side
Of the lofty wall that is ceaseless worn
By the mighty swells, and thus was torn
The seething course where the surges leap
With maddest bound to the lower deep
Between the great cliffs that, wide asunder,
Echo back the roar of their thunder.
With patient labor we strive at length
To find us aid in a tireless strength ;
We conquer oft through marvellous feat.
Yet must we feel in the full conceit
Of our haughty thought and boasting words
That the forces dread have feeble lords,
When long we gaze at the great world’s wonder,
Our hearts all athrob with its thunder !
Source: Robert S. Jenkins. Poems of the New Century, First Series: Minor Lyric and Narrative Poems. Toronto: William Briggs, 1903
Impressions and fancies on viewing for the first time, and from the American side, on Sept. 15th, 1906:
The famous cataract whose ancient birth
Dates from the glacial epoch of the earth,
I held in contemplation for the day,
With its environ that in prospect lay.
Through ages past, long ere the steps of man
Its shores betray’d, enquiring Fancy ran;
When the cyclopean mammoth left his spoor,
Without incurring peril of arm’d pursuer:
And from the scenes inductive Fancy drew
Events of time predestined to ensue;
Time will complete the gulch and Erie’s shore
Will curb an inland ocean’s wrath no more!
Long sunken wrecks will strew a new-made ground,
And human skulls with grinning teeth lay round!
In these events, man has no role to play;
His hand might haste, but not suspend a day.
Till water ceases in the mists to rise,
And loaded cloud restore it from the skies,
Will these events draw nearer day by day,
However distant in the future they.
But franchise holders, be ye not concern’d!
Ere these events, your names will be inurn’d;
Your marble tombs will have dissolved to earth,
And fame forgotten your ogygian birth.
Now present scenes arise in mental view
That are not entered on the day’s menu:
First comes professor of hydrodynamics
(Important branch of present-day mechanics)
And calculates the equine power needed
To tow it off to Uncle Sam—thus he did;
Then comes along a specialist on ‘quakes,
And tells how many San Francisco shakes
It represents per annum; then comes next
The company promoter and his text
Is syndicates and shares and dividends
Of one per cent, per hour for all his friends;
Last comes the man who dotes on olden things,
And grappling hooks and tarry tackle brings
To raise the Caroline—but Sam says “No!
Nurse not sad memories in a five-cent show;
Let our inglorious incidents of war
Pass to oblivion—not a cheap bazaar;
And curse the poet who in deathless song
These adverse memories would through time prolong.”
The virtuoso laid his tackle by,
And called up all to drink, and all were dry.
His calling now the gorge-route agent plies,
Exhorting travellers to patronize
The foresaid route—a twenty-minute spell
Hung by a hair above the gulf of Hell;
Where raven locks may justly fear a blight;
If danger imminent can blanch them white.
That no calamity has marr’d the past
Avails not those to whom it comes at last:
And come it will, such horror as the “Tay ”
Will be remembered from some fateful day.
But to the “Falls”—unable to compute
Such vast hydraulic power, I substitute
A simile poetic of its power,
To be repeated sixty times per hour:
A thousand tons of over-pending rock,
Detach’d by earthquake or electric shock,
From some high summit, towering mountain peak,
And downward plunging leaves its path a streak
Of smoke and debris as it cleaves its way
Through copes and thicket with terrific sway,
And sinks half buried in the plain below:
The foot-hills shudder when it strikes the blow.
This poem was intended to be grave throughout, but falling in with a group of humorous fancies, I was lured for a spell from the path that most becomes a man of seventy-three years. G. S.
Source: George Summerss. Bird of the Bush: A Collection of Poems. Toronto: The Hunter-Rose Company, 1908
