Poetry of and about Niagara Falls & the Niagara River – the waterfalls, the city, the history, the stunters, and everything else Niagara
A young girl who’d never been kissed
To avoid an unpleasant tryst
She paddled her skiff
O’er the watery cliff
Becoming the Maid of the Mist
Source: Laroque, Corey. Here’s What the Poets are Saying. Niagara Falls, Ont.: Niagara Falls Review, November 21, 2009
This limerick was entered into the So You Think You Can Rhyme (2009) Limerick Contest to find Niagara Falls’ Poet Laureate
Go to the Limericks page
Cartwright wrote this long poem about Lena, The Maid of the Mist, based on settler narratives of the Native peoples of Niagara Falls
See this book at Hathi Trust
Originally published Dublin: William McGee, 1860
Conway Edward Cartwight (1837-1920) was a Canadian poet and cleric.
MAJESTIC archer ! Scarce more swiftly fly
‡‡Electric rivers, in their earthward flow,
That leap thro’ sulphur spray th’ abyss of sky,
‡‡Than shoots the current hurtling from his bow.
What pearls of mist his temples crown and strew
‡‡His flowing locks, his locks that glisten wet
And white where time shakes down its ancient snow !
‡‡Yet shines more radiant still his coronet
When on that brow the sun his seven gems has set.
‡‡Fast hold his wingèd steeds their rushing flight,
Or poise in air above the awful steep ;
‡‡While glints his mottled livery on the light,
And rose-cut brilliants from his bosom peep,
‡‡As doth a belt of night the heavens sweep
And dash its star-foam o’er the milky- way ;
‡‡And, when the precipice his coursers leap,
Shakes not the beaten earth beneath their play,
‡‡While fires internal feel their hoofs and dance and sway ?
Now dies the distant thunder on the ear,—
‡‡And Proteus-like he doth new image take :
He lays aside his gold and azure here,
‡‡To don the dappled coat of ocean-snake,
With creamy whiteness falling, flake by flake,
‡‡Adown the sea-green lustre of his hide ;
Then moves he swiftly, proudly to the lake,
‡‡While o’er my fancy, snake-like, visions glide,
For on his scaly back, behold, the centuries ride !
‡‡Oh, thou canst tell, eternal, awful tide.
What forces tore or wore this limy grave.
‡‡Did some fierce Samson tear earth’s jaws so wide,
And lay these rocks thy stony path that pave,
‡‡Or did the ceaseless ages beat and lave
Their prison with the fragile surf of time
‡‡Until a course was eaten by the wave—
When lake to lake sent forth a watery chime,
‡‡And thou, O Stream, new-born, beganst thy march sublime ?
Thy lips do swallow up my tiny voice,
‡‡While round me gathers awe as calm and chill
As thine own mist, and yet do I rejoice
‡‡In thee, O boist’rous emblem of the will ;
For thine the gush of life, the buoyant thrill
‡‡Of joy untamed, youth’s laughter high and free.
Then on ! and sing the song that mocks at ill :
‡‡The sigh, the storm, the agony shall be
Unknown until thy waters clasp the mournful sea.
‡‡Ah ! type of time, thy surge the billowy crush
Of centuries—I, gazing o’er the brink,
‡‡Seem borne along the seething flood, the rush
Of years. Nay, doomèd river ; thou must sink
‡‡Into the infinite, and it shall drink
Thee up ; while I unmoved may hear thy tide
‡‡In tumult rolling at my feet, nor shrink
To see thy fateful waves, but view them glide
‡‡With all a mortal’s sadness, an immortal’s pride.
Source: Richard Edwin Day. Lines in the Sand. Syracuse, NY: John T. Roberts for the Syracuse Chapter of Delta Upsilon, 1878
RIVER that runnest with tempestuous note,
‡‡With rioting eddies and tumultuous tide
And maelstroms struggling in the chasm’s throat,
‡‡A thousand tempests in thine onset ride ;
‡‡A thousand storms, whose thunders never died
When o’er the misty meadows of the air
‡‡The volleying clouds were scattered far and wide,
Charge in mad wheel, like furious horsemen where
Their frothing squadrons plunge around the embattled square.
But as thy waters throng the sheer decline,
‡‡What image in the mind’s fantastic world —
Of mighty cavalry down some path malign,
‡‡Unseen, unguessed, with trampling turmoil whirled ;
‡‡Or of innumerable bison hurled
Before the hunters to a cañon’s deep,
‡‡And myriads on rushing myriads swirled
Over the maddening and horrid steep —
But sinks before thy unimaginable sweep !
Far other is the vision of thy strength
‡‡Where the dire tumults fail in murmurs low :
Like level-lying lawns is thy green length,
‡‡And meadow-white the great foam-blossoms blow.
‡‡Beside thy bank, which evergreens o’ergrow,
Most like a flower-strewn Titan thou dost dream —
‡‡After some vast primeval labor’s throe —
And the far cataract’s snows glide and gleam
Thicker than star-foam on the Milky Way’s dark stream.
Methinks, brave river, muttering in thy jar
‡‡Ponderous syllables of an age-old tongue, —
Heir of some boisterous sea once billowing far,
‡‡Strength of the old world’s loins when time was young,
‡‡I hear thee faintlier chant a pæan flung
Along thy footpath, in Earth’s rugged prime,
‡‡When from a grander steep thy challenge rung,
And vapors rose on pillars more sublime
‡‡To where thy rainbow’s unsubstantial arches climb.
Emblem of youth eternal, in whose course
‡‡A thousand years are as the vasty surge
That every moment crashes, loud and hoarse,
‡‡Into the torment of the whelming gurge,
‡‡Why do thy floods such march impetuous urge ?
No sovereign voice exhorts thy restless tide
‡‡In one impatient hour its life to merge,
Lest some unconquered good may yet abide
When thy spent waters in the solemn sea subside.
Thy lips do swallow up my tiny voice ;
‡‡My thoughts lie baffled in thy torrent’s spell.
Yet in thy shock and riot I rejoice,
‡‡Type of humanity when life did well
‡‡Lavish and buoyant as thy chanting swell,
When all its days to stormy music ran,
‡‡Unconscious of the sea-goal seaward fell ;
When laughter like thy spray flew in its van ;
And as thy chainless flow was the free heart of man.
Source: Richard Edwin Day. Poems. New York: Cassell & Co., 1888
What does it mean to fall?
To be swept away on a course
To be carried by an entity other than yourself?
To be in your heart still, while ever-changing?
To fall in love
To fall down
To fall apart
To fall inline
The dictionary says falling is a freely descent
but are our falls ever done
out of freedom? Freedom in the sense of choice?
Is the fall as Romantic literature sometimes describes
the process of demise
or the final realization that a character was or is not wise?
Does anyone truly choose to fall?
Whether out of love or despair—Oh,
whoever seems to care
when you yourself are falling.
Does water choose to forever fall?
To be labeled as the choiceless descent
called freely?
Are we falling through the sky or
pulled by another force? Why
are we choosing any of it, but a perspective
in which we self identify?
Is Niagara falls truly falling
or by choice, jumping down?
Source: Stephanie Froebel. Niagara Falls Changed My Perception on Life. YouTube Video, 2021. https://youtu.be/MnOxwjOngNM
Froebel also wrote an essay entitled Humans’ Imposition of Hierarchy: How Humans are Destroying the Planet Through Language
See more from Froebel:
Website https://www.stephaniefroebel.com/
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