Poetry of and about Niagara Falls & the Niagara River – the waterfalls, the city, the history, the stunters, and everything else Niagara
On Table Rock we did embrace
And then we stood both face to face.
The moon was up, the wind was high —
I looked at she, and she at I.
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.
My wife and I went round the Falls;
‡‡My wife and I came back again;
My wife and I went up the hill;
‡‡And only think — we felt no pain!
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.
The following verse is found in the Table Rock Album, unattributed and untitled.
My thoughts are strange, sublime and deep,
‡‡‡‡‡‡ As I look up to thee —
What a glorious place for washing sheep
‡‡‡‡‡‡ Niagara would be!
Further investigation reveals that this is a short excerpt from a longer poem, which can be found under the title Thoughts on Visiting Niagara in George Holley’s Niagara : Its History and Geology, Incidents and Poetry, With Illustrations.
“I wonder how long you’ve been a roarin‘
At this infernal rate ;
I wonder if all you’ve been a porin‘
Could be ciphered on a slate.
“I wonder how such a thund’rin‘ sounded
When all New York was woods ;
I suppose some Indians have been drownded
When rains have raised your floods .
“I wonder if wild stags and buffaloes
Havn’t stood where now I stand ;
Well , ‘spose—bein ‘scared at first—they stub’d their toes,
I wonder where they’d land !
“I wonder if the rainbow’s been a shinin‘
Since sunrise at creation ;
And this water-fall been underminin‘
With constant spateration !
“That Moses never mentioned ye, I’ve wondered,
While other things describin‘.
My conscience ! how loud you must have thunder’d
While the deluge was subsidin‘ !
“My thoughts are strange, magnificent and deep,
While I look down on thee.
Oh ! what a splendid place for washing sheep
Niagara would be !
“And oh ! what a tremendous water power
Is wasted o’er its edge !
One man might furnish all the world with flour
With a single privilege.
“I wonder how many times the lakes have all
Been emptied over here ?
Why Clinton didn’t feed the Grand Canawl
From hence, I think is queer.”
Source for the sheep washing fragment: 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
Source for the whole poem: George W. Holley. Niagara : Its History and Geology, Incidents and Poetry, With Illustrations. Toronto: Hunter, Rose and Company, 1872
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.
The waters of Niagara,
‘Tis wondrous how they go,
A tumbling from the rock above,
Down to the rocks below.
They’ve run this way, this many a day,
And now to shift the scene,
I would suggest, just for a change,
To have them run up stream.
Source: Dr. Thomas Rolph. A Brief Account, Together With Observations, Made During a Visit in the West Indies, and a Tour Through the United States of America, in Parts of the Years 1832-3; Together With a Statistical Account of Upper Canada. Dundas, U.C. : G. Heyworth Hackstaff, Printer, 1836.
Rolph mentions this poem was written in the Table Rock Album; it is not published in Thomas & Lathrop’s excerpts from the Table Rock Album. Rolph would have been looking at the original. See the Table of Contents of the Table Rock Albums
‘Down, down, down, ten thousand fathoms deep.’
—Count Fathom.
Who does not know that dreadful gulf, where Niagara falls,
Where eagle unto eagle screams, to vulture vulture calls;
Where down beneath, Despair and Death in liquid darkness grope,
And upward, on the foam there shines a rainbow without Hope;
While, hung with clouds of Fear and Doubt, the unreturning wave
Suddenly gives an awful plunge, like life into the grave;
And many a hapless mortal there hath dived to bale or bliss;
One—only one—hath ever lived to rise from that abyss!
Oh, Heav’n! it turns me now to ice, with chill of fear extreme,
To think of my frail bark adrift on that tumultuous stream!
In vain with desperate sinews, strung by love of life and light,
I urged that coffin, my canoe, against the current’s might:
On—on—still on—direct for doom, the river rush’d in force,
And fearfully the stream of Time raced with it in its course.
My eyes I closed—I dared not look the way towards the goal;
But still I view’d the horrid close, and dreamt it in my soul.
Plainly, as through transparent lids, I saw the fleeting shore,
And lofty trees, like winged things, flit by for evermore;
Plainly,—but with no prophet sense—I heard the sullen sound,
The torrent’s voice—and felt the mist, like death-sweat gathering round.
O agony! O life! My home! and those that made it sweet:
Ere I could pray, the torrent lay beneath my very feet.
With frightful whirl, more swift than thought, I passed the dizzy edge,
Bound after bound, with hideous bruise, I dashed from ledge to ledge,
From crag to crag,—in speechless pain,—from midnight deep to deep;
I did not die,—but anguish stunn’d my senses into sleep.
How long entranced, or whither dived, no clue I have to find:
At last the gradual light of life came dawning o’er my mind;
And through my brain there thrill’d a cry,—a cry as shrill as birds’
Of vulture or of eagle kind, but this was set to words:—
‘It’s Edgar Huntley in his cap and nightgown, I declares!
He’s been a walking in his sleep, and pitch’d all down the stairs!’
Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker is a 1799 novel by the American author Charles Brockden Brown that was popular at the time this poem was written.
Source: Thomas Hood. The Works of Thomas Hood: Comic, in Prose and Verse, with all the Original Illustrations. vol. 1. London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1882