We’re getting down to the wire! There is one week left to submit your poem about Niagara Falls to the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Contest!!
The judges have sharpened their pencils and are eagerly awaiting reading the submissions!
The curator is feverishly working at getting all of the submission ready for the print anthology of the winners and contestants that will hopefully be available later this year.
The Falls of Niagara–From the Canada Side painted by B. Hess, 1868 Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
God of the mountain-height and rolling flood !
What majesty, and might and grandeur soar
In one unceasing hymn of praise to Thee
From out the turmoil of Niagara’s surge.
Roll on, proud terrorist ! with sweep sublime,
Whose merest touch is as the lusty throes
Of a whole race of Anaks starting from
A trance of passion gathering while it slept.
The massive oak that wrestles with the blasts
For centuries, is but a fragile whisp,
A giant’s toy, in thy relentless grasp ;
And man, whose pride would overawe the world,
Is but a paltry bubble in thy hand,
That passes into nothingness and death.
The crash and wrack of worlds, the sway supreme
Of nation over nation, and the rise
And fall of mighty empires, are as nought
Compared with thee, who’st seen the ages pass,
As in a mirror ; thou the Merlin dread
That beckons them to their eternal rest,
And lulls them into silence with a psalm.
The centuries lie buried at thy feet,
And all their shrouded hosts rise up to pay
The great magician homage. Thy dread voice
Is as the thunder amid Alpine hills,
And the sun-flash upon thine angry brow
The awful lightning of thy wrath, that like
The fine Damascus blade lets out the life,
Or ere the spirit mounts the Elysian fields.
The children of to-day will have grown old ;
Their children’s children from the ample scroll
And record where the generations trace
Their mortal autographs, shall pass away
And be forgotten ; but thy trumpet tones,
Wild, deep, sonorous, then as now, shall make
The heart of man a solemn fane of praise.
Æolus’ slaves, the rude compliant winds,
May lash the sea to fury ; billows roll,
And mountain-wave on mountain-wave be piled ;
When, lo ! the spirit of the storm bows down
Beneath the fetters of the angel, Calm :
But thy tremendous bass confronts the skies
With jubilee of passion evermore,
Unchanged, unchangeable, making thy song
The type of the eternal, without end.
Source: Niagara by Charles Sangster was first published in the British American Magazine (Toronto), 1 (1863): 234–35
Also published in Charles Sangster, ed. by Frank M. Tierney. Norland Echoes and Other Strains and Lyrics. Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1976
Heart-Shaped Jacuzzi in a Suite at the America’s Best Inn on Lundy’s Lane . Photo by Alina Rashid, July 13, 2005 Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
The same old souvenirs
still amuse us — pennants,
Indian wood carvings,
and the aphrodisiac cocktails
whose nectar we spill
on pillows like some happy couple.
We spent our sleepless nights
rehearsing melodramas (I remember
your fondness for Chopin)
while the monotonous aquatic
thunder numbed our ears
and the braille of stars felt soft.
In a lofty luxurious suite
overlooking
the picture postcard cataracts
we tickled the skin of dreams
and fevered our love
with hors d’oeuvres.
At night the neon loins
of this city unveil brides galore.
O Rainbow Bridge,
believe me when I say
our honeymoon was nothing more
than breakfast in bed.
Source: Len Gasparini. Cutty Sark: Poems. Quarry Press, 1970. This poem also appeared in New American and Canadian Poetry edited by John Gill, 1971
This poem was not received favourably by all readers. In the Cincinnati Mirror a review was published by “G,” presumably the editor William Davis Gallagher. The tone of this review is set in the first sentence: “Upon what principle this production is called a poem, we have not been able to determine” and grudgingly continues “It is true, that it contains occasional good similes, and is not destitute of poetic imagery; and moreover, has one quality of the sublime—being sometimes eminently obscure.”
I’ve added this review in the pictures below, and also added it to this poem’s page on the website (link above).
I invite you to take some time, read the poem and then the review, and decide if G was perhaps a little harsh or right on.
Part of Niagara Falls on the U.S. side of the river, seen from the Canada side Drawn June 1806 by D. Wadsworth, from nature Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Roar, raging torrent—and thou mighty river
Dash thy white waves on the valley below ;
Frown, ye dark mountains, and shadow for ever
The deep rocky bed where the rude rapids flow.
The green sunny glade and the smooth flowing fountains,
Brighten the home of the coward and slave,
The flood and the forest, the rock and the mountain,
Rear on their bosom the free and the brave.
While pours thy broad wave like a torrent from heaven,
Each son thou shalt rear in the battle’s wild shock,
When the death speaking blast of the trumpet is given,
Shall charge like thy waters, or stand like thy rocks ;
Though his roof be the clouds, and the ground be his pillow—
Though he stride the rough mountain or toss on the foam,
He will strike fast and well on the field or the billow,
In triumph Columbia !—for God and his home.
Source: The Albion. June 6, 1835. Signed H. Clinch, Esq.
This poem is almost identical to the first and last (6th) stanzas of the poem Niagara by Joseph Rodman Drake
Also published with minor changes in: The Southern Warbler: A New Collection. Charleston: Babcock & Co., 1845 and in Songs of Ireland and Other Lands. New York: D. & J. Sadlier, 1847
