To Niagara by Emmeline Stuart-Wortley

Chaos of Beauty! — yet with horror blent,
Tremendous Chaos of One Element!
How in the triumph of thy mystery,
The power of all seems largely given to thee;
While still the astounding struggle, as we gaze,
Wakes more and more the wildered soul’s amaze;
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with horror blent,
Transcendant Chaos of One Element!

‘Tis Morning: all seems dazzling, — all divine;
How lustrously thy living waters shine:
The sun on thee hath blazed to second birth,
And Heaven, descending, sure hath touched the earth, —
Touched it, and bade its pride a Shadow be, —
Its motion, strength, and life, resigned to thee!
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with horror blent,
Majestic Chaos of One Element!

‘Tis Evening: have Her skies blushed more to find,
That on thine Earth-born forehead thou canst bind
A glory that shall win the astonished eye
From all their crowning Heavenly Pageantry?
Thou hast power to charm, too, from those Worlds of Light,
The great Celestial Mysteries of the old Night;
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with terrors blent,
Sublimer Chaos of One Element!

We greet thee with a burst of thoughts that roll
In wild responsive tumult through the Soul,
There eddying, the endless dreams in answer free,
Thrill, maddening with tempestuous sympathy.
What deep Niagaras have rushed and reigned
Through hosts of minds, — o’ermastering and unchained;
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with horror blent,
Tremendous Chaos of One Element!

Each differing Mind, — that broods o’er this dread scene, —
Or stern or mild, or fiery or serene,
Lends to thine awful mien and wonderous tone,
Its shadowy Semblance, faintly o’er thee thrown;
Winged souls, as with a crash of Thought, sweep down,
With thee, in passion, stormier than thine own! —
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with horror blent, —
Ungoverned Chaos of One Element!

There let us stand where thou wouldst seem to beat
Earth to a quivering foam beneath thy feet;
Thence upward look, where thou, midst vapoury shrouds,
Com’st like a flashing Ocean from the clouds!
A falling Firmament, — just wrenched away,
A falling Heaven, with stars dashed all to spray:
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with horror blent,
O’erpowering Chaos of One Element!

Yea! how thou seem’st through those white eddying shrouds,
To burst like some lashed Ocean from the Clouds!
Some loosened Firmament, midst storms of light,
Some down-driven Heaven of Stars, half-bared to sight;
Awe-struck we see these gathering terrors hurled! —
We gaze — Niagara seems made the World;
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with horror blent,
Stupendous Chaos of One Element!

Hast thou, indeed, with wild derision beat
Earth and her Empires under thy proud feet?
Art thou Unmaker of her strength and pride? —
Hast thou the unchecked Dominion far and wide? —
“Aha!” thou seem’st to shout, for evermore!
And what shall hurl reply to thy dread roar?
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with terrors blent,
Exulting Chaos of One Element!

Lo! be not thou a watery Sampson fierce;
Seize not the pillars old of the Universe!
Nor this fair Temple of grey Time destroy,
Smit with a sudden rage, and phrenzied joy.
Hast thou, blind Giant-Terror! thou this power?
No, surely not, till strikes the appointed hour!
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with horror blent,
Appalling Chaos of One Element!

Then, — then, — perchance, ‘midst all the gathering gloom,
The chasmy rending of each yawning Tomb,
Thou, with thy maddened waters yet mayst play
Disastrous part in all the vast dismay;
With seven-fold roar and shuddering hideous leap,
Thou to the centre mayst plunge down thy steep!
Chaos of Beauty! — though with terrors blent,
Terrific Chaos of One Element!

Or with sublime recoil, up-shooting high,
Mayst thou expire in spray along the sky;
Scattered through space, — yet thy moist clouds may float,
Showered o’er the face of some bright world remote,
Snatched to another atmosphere serene, —
So long thou sang’st of Heaven in Earth’s dim scene.
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with terrors blent,
Bewildering Chaos of One Element!

So long thy rolling Hallelujahs rang
To Heaven, from Earth where thou, glad-shouting sang,
And called vain Man to join thine echoing strain, —
That thus, perchance, thou’lt sing and shine again
In some fair Planet, thrilled with many a tone
Of thundering Hallelujahs, like thine own.
Chaos of Beauty! — yet with terror blent,
Transcendant Chaos of One Element!

One moment let me Heavenwards raise mine eyes,
Where flash through the empires of Night’s shuddering skies,
Niagaras of Fire!—urged on sublime,
Great Worlds driven hurrying down the Steep of Time;
Grandest Niagara of Nature! Stream, —
Where blazing Cataracts of Creations flame! —
Creations crowded to a Chaos, blent, —
Till theirs, — like thine, — seems One bright Element!

One moment Heavenwards, thus, I raise mine eyes,
Where flash through Night’s outstretched, imperial skies,
Niagaras of Flame, that roll and sweep,
Mysterious Time! — down thy great shadowy Steep,
Mightiest Niagara of Nature, gleam, —
Stream, blazing Cataracts of Creations, stream!
A Sea of Fire ye seem, thus heaved and blent, —
Resplendent Chaos of One Element!

Source: Emmeline Stuart-Wortley. On the Approaching Close of the Great Exhibition. London: W.N. Wright, 1851

Click here to read a biography of Emmeline Stuart-Wortley

Stuart-Wortley also wrote a sonnet entitled To Niagara. Click here to see it.

To Niagara by Emmeline Stuart-Wortley

Niagara! — that glorious voice of thine,
‡‡With never-ceasing, gathering power, seems still,
‡‡To charm each haunting sense of mortal ill;
It speaks but of the distant — the divine —
It lifts the soul to Nature’s holiest shrine,
‡‡It links the mind, with a surpassing skill,
‡‡To worlds that loftier destinies fulfil, —
Those worlds that scorn Creation’s boundary line.
‡‡Dread Fall! In beauty a crowned Sun of Light!
In action an Atlantic! — such thy force,
‡‡Ocean ‘gainst Ocean, battling in their might,
Were scarce more dreadful than thy raging course; —
‡‡While mounts thy glittering spray the Heavenly Height,
Tossed like the flashing mane of Death’s pale Horse!

Source: Emmeline Stuart-Wortley. On the Approaching Close of the Great Exhibition. London: W.N. Wright, 1851

Click here to read a biography of Emmeline Stuart-Wortley

Stuart-Wortley also wrote a longer poem entitled To Niagara. Click here to see it.

Flower of Niagara by Hannah F. Gould

“Before the writer is a delicate white Anemone, plucked from under the water-sheet at Niagara Falls. It was found quietly growing in a crevice of the limestone bed that, on one hand, flanks the perilous passage beneath the cataract.”

Flower of Niagara, — spirit-like flower!
‡‡High is the language thou speak’st to the soul ;
Grand is thy birthplace of splendor and power, —
‡‡Only “Omnipotence” traced on the whole.

Floods in the cataract curtained thy bed,
‡‡Awful, — stupendous, — high over thee hung ;
Damp from their sweep thy soft infancy fed,
‡‡Thunders eternal thy lullaby sung.

Rushing, and raging, with fierceness and foam,
‡‡Proud as the angels who fell from their bliss,
Plunged the bold waters, o’ershooting thy home,
‡‡Howling and wild, to their wrathful abyss.

Sure but a step was between him and death,
‡‡Who ventured forth to thy wondrous retreat :
Only one foot-slip, — one careless-drawn breath, —
‡‡Then but once more had his life-pulse to beat !

Yet, little tenderling, still didst thou bide
‡‡Lone in thy crevice, all fair and serene ;
Ever surveying its stormy outside,
‡‡Mild and unawed by the turbulent scene.

There wast thou safe as a pearl in its shell
‡‡‘Mid a whole ocean of tumult and sound; —
Calm as an anchoret bowed in his cell,
‡‡Whilst war and hurricane ravage the ground.

What was thy confidence, — who was thy stay,
‡‡When the loud waters swift o’er thee were driven,
Headlong to fall, throwing up the mad spray
‡‡Aimed like weak insults of rebels to Heaven ?

Still not a shock jarred thy root or thy stem, —
‡‡No heavy drop struck a petal of thine ;
Thou wast secure as a beautiful gem
‡‡Placed in the niche from a finger divine.

Say, sweet Anemone ! say, didst thou know
‡‡What the whole storm of the cataract spanned, —
O’er it, how God bent his glorious bow,
‡‡Guiding the flood by a sign of his hand ?

Then didst thou hear, in the distance remote,
‡‡How in its lines the strong element ran,
Tamed and assuaged, — on its bosom afloat
‡‡Bearing the treasures and life-boat of man?

Firm in thy measureless fortress of stone,
‡‡Leaning wast thou on the Deity’s will,
Meek as a spirit that kneels at his throne,
‡‡Waiting his holy design to fulfil.

Thence art thou come on thy mission to me,
‡‡Mild little angel in floral disguise !
Speaking with import profound as the sea, —
‡‡Bright as the stars, and sublime as the skies !

Who could thy home and thy structure behold,
‡‡His love and care ever present to doubt,
Whose viewless hand wrought thy delicate mould,
‡‡Nursed thee, and rolled the dread water-sheets out?

Think, weary soul whom earth’s trials assail,
‡‡When for thy faith comes the dubious hour, —
Lest o’er its strength the loud terrors prevail, —
‡‡Think of the tender Niagara Flower.

He who evoked the soft bud in the rock
‡‡Will not leave thee in the conflict alone !
He loseth never a lamb of his flock, —
‡‡Droppeth no jewel he marks as his own !

Source: Hannah Flagg Gould. New Poems by Miss Hannah F. Gould. Boston, F. J. Reynolds & Co., 1850

Read about Gould here

Niagara by Julia Older

What I remember most is not the barrage,
the beating, the thunderous surge
in my plugged ears. Or the faces
drenched in rivulets of tears. Not the rubber
ducky shoes, or hooked yellow slickers and hats
lined up in a row like Gloucester ghosts
in the fog of the women’s undressing room.
But how, being shy and thirteen, I crouched
in a private cubby and slipping off my panties,
revived the child who once threw off her clothes
and ran through summer storms
open-mouthed in sheets of rain—
a bare-back rider with streaming hair
and tall grass between my toes
—wild and ecstatic.

Drowned in the deafening roar,
my parents’ incessant arguing dissolved to silence
as they held on for dear life to the railing.
Single file we climbed to The Cave of Winds
through the relentless crash of water.
An old man ahead of me stopped. Laughing,
I leapt around and raced up the winding steps, free
to look beyond their fear and shouting.
My uplifted face glowed with the stinging tattoo
and poured down my legs. Beyond belief,
on the top platform I looked through a quicksilver veil
hurling rainbows and spray into my eyes.
Though the scaffold rotted long ago
I’m still there, naked with the angel
behind the falls.

Source: Deus Loci, 2010/2011 vol 12, p. 92-93

About Julia Older

Life at Niagara: An Epistle From the Falls By James Thomas Fields

Dear N. : While the rainbows are spanning the Falls,
And a lusty Scotch infant next door raises squalls, —
While the frantic young mother shouts madly for milk,
In tones not so soft, quite, as satin or silk, —
Your friend, grown poetic, has snatched up his pen,
To dash off a line to “the best of young men.”

You’ve been at the Falls, and they can’t be described,
Though Coleridge himself from the tomb should be bribed ;
Pile mountains of paper, and flood them with ink,
And Niagara is dry, though the reader should sink.
But there’s life here, my friend, — closely packed to be sure, —
For fashion condenses what man must endure :
Not a bed to be had, not a chair, or a block,
And the only spare table is old Table Rock.
How glorious a visit, were taverns and gongs
But banished a week to where Fashion belongs,
To tramp through the forest, with no charge of fares,
In a pair of brogans, such as Audubon wears;
To meet a lithe Indian, all stately and stark,
And “put up” a few days in his wigwam of bark; —
Gods! a walk through the woods, by the light of the stars,
Would outweigh all the lamps, and the Lewiston cars!

But here’s life at the Falls — from a year to fourscore —
(And I think by the sound there’s a day at next door ; )
Here are members of Congress, away from their seats,
Though sure to be there when the dinner-gong beats ;
Here are waiters, so eager your viands to snatch,
That they leap down the stairs like a multiplied Patch ;
To the sound of sweet music they nimbly appear,
And whisk off your corn while they tickle your ear.
Here are pensive young preachers, dressed quite comme il faut,
In coats black as night, and cravats pure as snow ;
Rich East India governors, heavy as gold,
Hanging round like weak sun-flowers, yellow and old ;
Artistical talent, with sketch-book displayed,
Drawing very bad water in very poor shade ;
Fat cockneys from Charing-Cross ; belles from Madrid,
Whose long jewelled fingers outrival Jamschid ;
Superb English maidens, with swan-swimming gait,
Who float round the Rapids like Junos in state ; —
But the brightest-eyed daughters, the best string of pearls,
Represent in their beauty our own Yankee Girls.

Here cluster the fair, and the plain, and the prim,
Round the gallant and gay, whiskered up to the brim ;
Here’s a biped in boots, a most exquisite ass,
Who looks at the Falls through a golden-rimmed glass ;
And to-day such a waist, N., I saw on the Rock,
That to furnish the brains seemed a slight waste of stock.
Here’s a lively old lady, all feathers and fans,
Who trots about peddling her Susans and Anns ;
And a drab-colored Quaker, I’ve seen more than twice
Take a sly glass of something in water and ice.
But brief let me be, while the dull curfew tolls ;
Niagara still lives! still it rushes, and rolls ; —
There is no spot on earth where I’d sooner meet you,
And the friends we both love, N., the choice and the true,
Though a Downeastern editor published the lie
That this glorious old cataract’s “all in my eye!”

Source: James Thomas Fields. Poems by James T. Fields. Boston: William D. Ticknor & Company, 1849

Read about Fields here

Tag: Niagara Falls

To Niagara by Emmeline Stuart-Wortley

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To Niagara by Emmeline Stuart-Wortley

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Flower of Niagara by Hannah F. Gould

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Niagara by Julia Older

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Life at Niagara: An Epistle From the Falls By James Thomas Fields

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