How strangely human your adventured way !
From boundlessness you come. An infancy
‘Tween parent banks you spend in fretless glee
Ere adolescent drives exert their sway
And churn your waters white. Then comes the day
You take the plunge of destiny, to be
Thenceforth a man; and, filled with urgency
A purpose to pursue, charge to the fray
Of strenuous enterprise. With sharp dismay
You sense the walls you dug so joyously
Are closing in on life, and to break free
Your waters vainly whirl and rage till they
Find calm and comfort in acceptancy
And drift to join again the boundless sea.
Source: The Tower: The Poets of the Niagara Peninsula. The Tower Poetry Society, 1958.
The gas was on in the Institute,
The flare was up in the gym,
A man was running a mineral line,
A lass was singing a hymn,
When Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Came swimming along the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley.
Swimming along –
Swimming along –
Swimming along from Severn,
And paying a call at Dawley Bank while swimming along to Heaven.
The sun shone low on the railway line
And over the bricks and stacks
And in at the upstairs windows
Of the Dawley houses’ backs
When we saw the ghost of Captain Webb,
Webb in a water sheeting,
Come dripping along in a bathing dress
To the Saturday evening meeting.
Dripping along –
Dripping along –
To the Congregational Hall;
Dripping and still he rose over the sill and faded away in a wall.
There wasn’t a man in Oakengates
That hadn’t got hold of the tale,
And over the valley in Ironbridge,
And round by Coalbrookdale,
How Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Rose rigid and dead from the old canal
That carries the bricks to Lawley.
Rigid and dead –
Rigid and dead –
To the Saturday congregation,
Paying a call at Dawley Bank on the way to his destination.
Source: Betjeman’s Banana Blush: Sir John Betjeman the Poet Laureate Reads His Verse. Charisma Records, 1973.
Captain Matthew Webb was a world-renowned swimmer who attempted to swim the Whirlpool Rapids at Niagara Falls on July 24, 1883. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Niagara Falls, New York. Read about Captain Webb here.
Upper Niagara River and Goat Island. Photograph by Andrew Porteus, 2004
An Indian, in the days of yore —
Of “fish and fur’s” abounding store —
Would cross Niagara’s stream —
Just where the river, smooth and wide,
Pours toward the gulf its treacherous tide,
Like some deceitful dream.
Near by, a bear was crossing, too :
Whose head no sooner rose to view,
Than straight the “Brave” urged his canoe
To grasp an easy prey ;
But Bruin fled not — glad to greet
A resting-place for weary feet,
He turned and swam his foe to meet,
Upon the watery way.
They met — the paddle’s blow was dealt ;
With paw received, or scarcely felt
By fur-protected bear.
Who, reaching up as for a bough,
Climbed gracefully into the prow
And sat serenely there.
The astonished “Brave” sought in his turn
The “ultima thule” of the stern,
And then sat down to stare.
And thus in armed neutrality
They sat in thoughtful “vis-à-vis,”
While the bark drifted silently
To meet the breakers white ;
But when the Indian seized an oar,
To stay his course, or seek the shore,
Admonished by an ominous roar,
He dropped it in affright :
For in those cavernous jaws he sees
Molars, incisors, cuspidés —
Enough a hero’s heart to freeze
Or dentist to delight.
More dreadful still, the angry Fall,
Like some huge monster seemed to call,
Impatient for its prey ;
And shows its breakers’ flashing teeth,
To welcome him to depths beneath ; —
And breathes its breath of spray.
Visions of fire and frying pan
Encompassed that bewildered man
(Tho’ watery fears oppressed)
And Shakspeare’s thought his bosom fills
“Better to bear our present ills
Than fly” — you know the rest.
Whether the Brave proved dainty fare,
And then the Fall devoured the bear,
Though unto them the “loss was sair”
To us is less ado :
But still, arrayed in fancy’s gleam,
Have floated down Tradition’s stream
The twain in that canoe —
And furnished to the faces pale,
The matter to “adorn a tale,”
And “point a moral,” too.
We float upon life’s lapsing tide
While toward some gulf the waters glide
With unremitting might ;
And some black bear holds us in awe,
Like the “black Care” which Horace saw
Behind the Roman knight.
We fain would seize an oar to reach
Some sylvan shore, some silvery beach ;
But still the moment miss —
For Pride, or Ease, or Care, or Fear,
Sits with o’erwhelming presence near ;
The saving hand we dare not lift,
And gently thus we drift, drift, drift,
Into the dread abyss.
Our land, which boasts that it prepares
Its morel and material wares,
Should make its legends, too :
And mixing one of native clay,
Let’s drop “a lion’s in the way,”
And in its stead hereafter say —
“A bear’s in the canoe.”
Interior View of Milk Cave, Also Known as Buttermilk Cave, on the Niagara River. New York Power Authority. Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
Here is the place of lores,
Of heroes that never return,
The site of sagas and Mysteries
Of tales before old Histories
Of council-fires that burn
Hid from the pound of the waters where the ‡‡‡‡Cataract trembles and pours.
Here in the dusky quiet,
Cadenced with birds and tides —
Here in the forest’s circling mood
The sense of truth-in-solitude —
It’s here that legend hides —
And stones and forests and cliffs shut out the ‡‡‡‡world’s tumultous riot.
Only the echoes remain
Like the thought-of-a-thought —
Only the whisper of falls
Like the talk, (in their council walls
Of pine,) together brought,
Discussing their people’s strange plight with ‡‡‡‡Stoic indifference to pain.
Day-hours are lived in the strife
Night-hours are spent in the Essence,
Wildly the waters shall lave,
Silences seal the great cave —
Its fate is a lost evanescence,
(Oh, moment magnificent with thought of primitive life).
Source: Evelyn M. Watson. Poems of the Niagara Frontier. New York: Dean & Company, 1929.
Cemetery at Fort Niagara, in the midst of a gravestone cleaning project. Image courtesy of New York State Parks
A few rods from the barrier-gate of Fort Niagara was the burying-ground. It was filled with memorials of the mutability and brevity of human life, and over the portals of entrance was painted, in large and emphatic characters, the word ‘Rest’ — Judge De Veaux.
Earth, upon her ample face,
Boasts no sweeter burial-place
Than a small enclosure green,
Near an ancient fortress seen ;
Mossy head-stones here and there
Names of fallen warriors bear,
But no eulogistic phrase,
Cut on rock, that meets the gaze,
Can our reverence command,
Like that brief inscription grand,
On the portal arch impressed — ‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡“Rest!”
River wide, and mighty lake
For the dead an anthem wake,
And with old, forgotten graves
Well comports the wash of waves,
Motto of the hallowed ground
Murmuring with solemn sound ;
Birds that by like spirits pass,
Winds that murmur in the grass,
Seem repeating evermore
That one word the gateway o’er,
Word that haunts a troubled breast— ‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡“Rest!”
Pilgrim, for a moment wait
Near the narrow entrance gate,
And one word peruse — no more —
Boldly traced the portals o’er ;
Mortal heart was never stirred
By a more emphatic word ;
One with deeper meaning fraught,
Or the power to quicken thought ;
Sermon, hymn, and funeral lay,
Eloquence the soul to sway,
In four letters are compressed — ‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡“Rest!”
Source: Hosmer, William H.C. The Poetical Works of William H.C. Hosmer. New York: Redfield, 1854
