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
(Found Some Years Ago at the Foot of Goat Island, Niagara)
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
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. Continue reading “Niagara by Joseph Hart Clinch”→
Millions of gallons
of surging water,
unstopping, relentless,
swirling through the gorges,
hurdling over the rocks,
furiously charging, headlong,
like a mighty herd of buffalo
racing madly toward a precipice,
but on a scale
and with an intensity
that overwhelms the observer,
reducing one to a mere spectator,
humbled by the sound and the fury
of nature’s most enduring
exhibition of unbridled power
at a place called …
Niagara Falls
Listen to Surging Water by Phillip W. Weiss. Read by Oliver Porteus
Copyright (c) 2004 Phillip W. Weiss
Source: The author, 2004.
