Barnett’s Table Rock House and Museum and the Prince of Wales Arch, 1860. Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
N ature’s great masterpiece ! how feeble man
I n vain essays of thee and thine to tell —
A ll wondrous as thou art — a mighty plan —
G reat, glorious, grand and indescribable !
A nd fain would measure thee with pigmy span !
“R efrain,” each object cries — “Lay down thy rod,
A nd look thro’ Nature, up to Nature’s God.
August 18, 1834
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 acrostic 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
Niagara Falls. To Thomas Dixon esq. this view of the American Fall taken from Goat Island. 1829. painted & engraved by W.J. Bennett ; printed by J. Neale. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
addressed to a friend
Years may roll on, but never shall their race ‡‡Bring to my eye another sight like this ;
Nor shall the rushing flood of Time efface ‡‡The sentiments profound of awe and bliss ; — ‡‡No ! never can my mind hereafter miss
The images so strongly there engraved ; ‡‡That overwhelming Fall — that dread abyss
From which the living torrents rose and raved : —
Whatever it may lose, this scene, at least, is saved.
And I have seen thee, wonder of the world ! ‡‡Unequalled cataract ! my country’s pride !
With all thy weight of waters downward hurled, ‡‡As if in earth’s deep bowels thou wouldst hide ‡‡Superior, Huron, Erie’s blended tide !
And I that foaming tide emerge have seen, ‡‡As winding down the precipice’s side,
Dipt by thy spray in everlasting green.
At thy dread foot I stood, and viewed the wondrous scene.
And shall I now attempt to body forth ‡‡Its mighty features in descriptive song ?
Bold effort ! and perhaps of little worth ; — ‡‡Yet, it would seem, some tribute doth belong ‡‡To Nature’s master-work, from mortal tongue ;
And thou, my friend, the effort dost demand : ‡‡Rouse then thy spirit to conception strong,
And come with me, in fancy take thy stand
Amidst the TERRIBLE, the BEAUTIFUL, the GRAND !
The sweep majestic of the river’s brow, ‡‡Which, far above, extends from shore to shore ;
The island, like a foam-encircled prow ; ‡‡Heaven’s bright blue arch rising behind and o’er ; ‡‡The lake-born torrents, as with ceaseless roar,
Over the everlasting rocks they roll, ‡‡Impatient, to the dizzy leap before ;
All rush at once upon the startled soul,
At the first rapid glance your eye throws o’er the whole.
But sight is mingled at the heart with sound — ‡‡The loud, the deafening thunder of the Fall ;
Which seems at first sensation to confound, ‡‡The brain to madden, and the breast appal, ‡‡And spread annihilation over all ! —
The dazzling whiteness of the sheeted foam. ‡‡Which to the eye appears a snow-built wall.
On which is reared a bright cerulean dome,
That poets well might take for Fancy’s airy home !
The clouds of rising and dissolving spray. ‡‡Which wave and wanton in the gusty wind ;
On which the sunbeams hold their magic play, ‡‡Painting gay rainbows of each glorious kind. ‡‡That change their shape and color, like the mind
Of soft and ductile youth with every scene ; ‡‡Now swelling upward free and unconfined,
In matchless beauty and resplendent sheen ;
Now bursting — leaving but the black abyss between !
The dark and dripping cliffs, which overhead ‡‡Rise like the war-built towers of ancient time,
Breathing defiance, and inspiring dread ; ‡‡Which echo back, with emphasis sublime, ‡‡The cataract’s awful sounds, in measured chime,
Rolling along the deep and distant pass, ‡‡Until at length the blood-stained heights they climb,
Where swelled the roar of battle — where, alas !
Our country’s sons and foes fell in one mingled mass.
Then, the still darker torrent at your feet, ‡‡Whose green-wreathed floods boil up from the abyss ;
To whose unfathomed depths, in one broad sheet, ‡‡They thundering fell — whose tides with horrid hiss, ‡‡Like venomous serpents vast, do seem, I wis,
Writhing in pain, and madly rushing by ‡‡Toward far Ontario’s bed,— all, all of this,
Must have struck on the heart, the ear, the eye,
To give the awful sense of its sublimity.
O, there I thought — and thought did well beseem ‡‡A scene so full of fearful majesty —
If with such wonders his creation teem, ‡‡What must the glory of their Author be ! ‡‡With what deep reverence and humility.
Ought we to bow before his mighty hand ! — ‡‡Lord of creation and eternity !
Shall human pride not quail at thy command ? — The thunder of thy power, O, who can understand !
Buffalo, July 6, 1823.
Source: J. Newton Brown. Emily, and Other Poems. Concord, N.H., I. S. Boyd, 1840.
Another poem on the NFPP website is possibly written by Brown. It was signed “Newton”, and published in the American Baptist Magazine in 1825. See Falls of Niagara: A Sketch
John Neal by Sarah Miriam Peale, c. 1823, Portland Museum of Art – Portland, Maine
The full title of this book is Battle of Niagara: A Poem, Without Notes : and Goldau, Or, The Maniac Harper. It was originally published under the pseudonym Jehu O’Cataract in 1818.
John Neal was of Quaker descent but was read out of the society. He was a pioneer in American literature, being the first American contributor to English and Scotch quarterlies. He was an artist, a lawyer, traveler, journalist, athlete and an advocate of woman suffrage in 1838.
“The Battle of Niagara” was written when the author was a prisoner, or so he informs the reader. It has a metrical introduction with four cantos which tell the story of the Battle of Niagara. This story is interspersed with various flights of poetic fancy on the scenery and surroundings of the Falls.
N.B. The Battle of Niagara is now formally known as the Battle of Lundy’s Lane. Other names have included the Battle of Niagara Falls and the Battle of Bridgewater.
*Dow, Charles Mason. Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls. Albany: State of New York, 1921, p. 699
From Frank H. Severance:**
As I survey the literature of this- period I find no bolder utterance, no fiercer defiance of Great Britain’s “Hordes,” than in the sonorous stanzas of some of our gentle poets. Iambic defiance, unless kindled by a grand genius, is a poor sort of fireworks, even when it undertakes to combine patriotism and appreciation of natural scenery. Certainly something might be expected of a poet who sandwiches Niagara Falls in between bloody battles and gives us the magnificent in nature, the gallant in warfare and the loftiest patriotism in purpose, the three strains woven in a triple paean of passion, 94 duodecimo pages in length. Such a work was offered to the world at Baltimore in 1818, with this title-page: “Battle of Niagara, a Poem without Notes, and Goldau, or the Maniac Harper. Eagles and Stars and Rainbows. By Jehu O’Cataract, author of ‘Keep Cool.’ ” I have never seen “Keep Cool,” but it must be very different from the “Battle of Niagara,” or it belies its name. The fiery Jehu O’Cataract was John Neal, or “Yankee Neal,” as he was called.
The “Battle of Niagara,” he informs the reader, was written when he was a prisoner; when he “felt the victories of his countrymen.” The poem has a metrical introduction and four cantos, in which is told, none too lucidly, the story of the battle of Niagara, with such flights of eagles, scintillation of stars and breaking of rainbows, that no quotation can do it justice. In style it is now Miltonic, now reminiscent of Walter Scott. The opening canto is mainly an apostrophe to the Bird, and a vision of glittering horsemen. Canto two is a dissertation on Lake Ontario, with word-pictures of the primitive Indian. The rest of the poem is devoted to the battle near the great cataract—and throughout all are sprinkled the eagles, stars and rainbows. Do not infer from this that the production is wholly bad; it is merely a good specimen of that early American poetry which was just bad enough to escape being good.
Source: John Neal. Battle of Niagara: A Poem, Without Notes : and Goldau, Or, The Maniac Harper. Baltimore: N.G. Maxwell. From the Portico Press, Geo. W. Grater, printer, 1818
Alexander Wilson. Image from his book American Ornithology
The foresters: a poem, descriptive of a pedestrian journey to the falls of Niagara, in the autumn of 1804 by the author of American Ornithology (Alexander Wilson).
An 80 page poem with an additional 26 pages of notes. Charles Dow* says of this poem “A narrative poem describing a journey from the banks of the Schuylkill, through Pennsylvania and New York to Niagara Falls, published in the Portfolio of Philadelphia in 1809 and 1810…the following lines show that Wilson’s fame rests more securely on an ornithological rather than on a poetical basis.”
From pg. 74:
Heavy and slow, increasing on the ear,
Deep through the woods a rising storm we hear,
Th’ approaching gust still loud and louder grows,
As when the strong north-east resistless blows,
Or black tornado, rushing through the wood,
Alarms th’ affrighted swains with uproar rude.
Yet the blue heavens displayed their clearest sky,
And dead below the silent forests lie;
And not a breath the slightest leaf assailed;
But all around tranquillity prevaile.
“What noise is that ?” we ask, with anxious mein,
A dull salt driver passing with his team,
“Noise! noise! — why nothing that I hear or see,
But Niagara Falls — Pray, whereabouts live ye?”
Because I taste limestone on my eyes’ parched lips and swim with carelessness in her urgency in constant motion
Because she is felt on the back of dawn
And not popping within of free fireworks, as she holds a much deeper secret
Her body, decaying with duplicitous effigies of her story, a story of erosion, of two bodies of water, meeting
A story lost without capture, lost outside the frame
Dipping my toes in such honeymoon
Of past loves
More luxurious than any fiberglass tub dripping with scarlet passion
And more than his thick hands on the steel beams hoistening up more divide, parking meters
She is beneath me, underneath those man-made islands
And searchingly, meandering to lower ground,
And its because her sound reverberates on the other side of the world
She sits still, in her royally crescent moon as time flowing through her like silk, changes her
Until, high beams flash in my rearview mirror
Telling me to move along
I have been staring at her for far too long
Source: Amanda Leonard, 2020
Amanda Leonard is an English/Visual Arts teacher who enjoys writing and sketching. She was born and raised in Niagara Falls, but has been nomadic for the last decade. She is currently writing a novel that is set in modern day Niagara Falls.
