” I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”
                                      Childe Harold — Byron

I stood in silent shrinking awe,
Upon the crumbling hollow— sounding Rock, ⁽¹⁾
Whose misty verge hung high and frightfully,
Above the deep wild—whirling Waters !
I was alone—Nature’s young Hermit,
Mutely worshiping upon her pulpit-throne,
The spirit of her might hovering serenely-stern
About her Home of Power,
The Thunder-fall of Floods !
I felt as if I trod on holy ground,
Encircled by the very Presence whose command
Opened of old the windows of the sky,
And buried Man and his inheritance,
In the dark fountains of the Sea !
What are the cobweb creeds and musty riddles
Of the Schools, to teach Divinity ?
Proud sophist, puny babbler of another’s doubts,
Come and kneel here upon the tombstone
Of thy dusty weakness, and be dumb!
Here lean beyond this dizzy brink,
And learn Philosophy in this
The Sanctuary and Solitude of Wonders !
Hast thou a tongue as eloquent as that,
Of deep calling to deep ?
A voice as musically strong as that bold echo,
Booming upward to the ear of God
In one eternal solemn tempest-tone
From yonder Gulph, forever veiled
With the dim curtaining of Clouds !

              *                *                *

Look up along the rushing river,
Ere it tumbles down in bellowing sheets of foam.
See how the mad, rock-broken billows leap in air—
Tossing their white and waving manes in crested pomp,
Like the wild gallop of a thousand war-steeds,
In the smoke and tumult of a battle-field !
Dashing with swift loud uproar, on they come
Rolling in broad blue columns ;
Until gathered on the ragged edge,
In one wide-surging phalanx furiously they plunge
In glassy torrents down the steep :
Unseen to struggle in the bubbling Pool below,
That heaves its throbbing bosom like the heart in death !
Rising again like a stout swimmer from its caves,
The Cataract still downward sweeps ;
First circling in a yeasty scintillating surface
From beneath its canopy of spray,
Then gracefully in sea-green eddies
Like a mermaid’s ringlets, floating with the tide ;
Till narrow’d in its coursing by the storm-scarr’d rocks,
It suddenly awakes again to waves,
And proudly foams between the iron-sided hills—
Whose dark pines shooting thro’ the clefts,
Nod in the wind like mountain plumes
Above the impetuous flood !
‘Onward’ ! and ‘Over’ ! still it goes, in free,
Untamed, untiring speed, mile upon mile,
To its last second bourn ;
Where joining in the wheeling squadrons of the waves,
It sinks and rises in alternate onset or defeat.
Here on the cool hill-side you may recline,
In balmy rest upon a couch of summer leaves,
And watch for hours the hurtling swoop
Of the strong whirlpool ⁽²⁾ —There, it runs
In wanton gambols prancing on the shore ;
Now curvets haughtily around the arena’s ring, ⁽³⁾
Then shakes its quivering lance in gleaming tilt,
And charges mid encountering clash and shock,
Far in the foaming fight !
Look how the wrecks of that Charybdis,
Planks and trees and splintered spars,
In endless revolutions toss about
Its gurgling waters ; sinking slowly now,
Now spinning upward like tail masts,
To be the sport and play-things of destruction,
Ere she swallow them forever in her strangling depths !
Returning homeward you may stroll thro’ Caverns, ⁽⁴⁾
And on velvet moss-seats meditate,
While chrystal mountain-springs gush at your feet
In softened hum along their pebbled path.
Still further on there is a deep and hideous hole,⁽⁵⁾
Whose cheerless night the sun hath never lit—
Here by a loose and mouldering ladder,
Then by careful step clinging to hanging vines
And jutting roots, you may descend,
Down to its dismal shades—
There in the hemloc gloom with hissing serpents
Gliding thro’ the rustling grass, fancy will draw
The panther with his burning eye fix’d on you,
Bristling in his lair to spring down from his hiding-place ;
Or as the twittering bat brushes your cheek
With his damp wing, will whisper in your ear
Wild tales of horrid Murder, till you see
The Bandit issuing from the thicket grimly stand,
Scowling before you smeared with blood,
And feel the cold sweat burst
In beaded drops upon your brow !

                *                 *                   *

Beetling in lonely majesty high over the
Colossal wall whose dark unfathomable base
No plummet ever sounded, stands a round Tower ;
Looming in feudal grandeur thro’ the storm—
Against its gray rough sides the current ever chafes,
Threat’ning with each new surge,
To hurl its huge foundations down—while still beyond
Its daring site, to lead the fearless traveler
From the shore, topples a slender bridge, ⁽⁶⁾
Poised o’er the precipice and shrouded,
In the curling vapour of the boisterous abyss !

                *                   *                     *
Thrown headlong from the lofty banks that girdle
With a flinty barrier America’s domain,
(In spirit like her Frontier Shield of native strength)
Behold another river in big undulations fall ;
Bounding and breaking like a mighty Avalanche, 
Descending from its Alpine eyre,
In a whirlwind of thick snow !
Hark how it roars ! Louder and deeper,
Than the bison at his bay or the Numidian lion,
When he lashes in his jungle his hot sides,
And pants for blood !—
See far thro’ the hazy air, a moving speck—
Ha ! ’tis a gallant little boat,
Struggling with desperate oar and lightly dancing,
On the bounding swells !
Borne like a buoyant cork by the resistless stream,
Away she shoots unequal to the force ;
Recovering, she fronts with a courageous prow
The multitude of her opposers, bravely cuts her way
Through their dividing ranks,
And battles with the breakers !
Row, brothers row—another pull—she’s safe !
And shouts of laughter from the dark-eyed ones,
Who spring upon the strand proclaim,
A merry ride and bonny boat ! ⁽⁷⁾

             *                 *               *

Hail tho’ the opening portals of thy Kingly coming,
To illuminate man’s face and nature’s with bright smiles ,
Thou dazzling messenger of light and life !
Hung like an ever-burning Lamp amid the darkness
Of the Universe, to gild the pathway of the stars,
And throw the mantle of thy glory on the earth !
Three Rainbows at my feet ! !  Beauty so blended
With wild power drawn on the canvass of the sky,
Is like a picture handed down from Heaven,
Fresh from the pencil of the Almighty’s hand !
Now glittering in the Sun’s full unobstructed blaze,
They flash in living lustre thro’ the sparkling air ;
Rising in high broad arches like so many
Bridges built of burnished jewels,
On whose rosy tops Angels might hovering strike
Their harps harmonious with the mellow bass
Of Nature’s never-ending Hymn !
Now melting into fainter hues, they linger in a
Sunset bloom among the pearly clouds ;
Till broken by the shaded disc that shaped them
In their gorgeous symmetry, they fade away
To ‘airy nothing ‘—like the pale twinkling of the
Morning star, or the young Poet’s painted dreams of fame,
In the ‘ disastrous twilight ‘ of defeated hopes !
Nor does the modest Moon refuse to see,
Her gentle image mirror’d in its dewy sheen—
For there in stilly midnight when the weary world
Is hush’d in sleep, her silvery Crescent
Spans the spray softly and tremblingly,
“Resembling ‘mid the torture of the scene
Love, watching madness, with unalterable mien “—

           *                   *                   *

Full many a fathom down, winding with cautious
Hesitating march along a narrow dusky path,
A file of men, slowly and singly move ;
In their slouched caps and leather-belted jerkins not unlike,
A robber-band among the passes of old Spain.
One, like a Chamois nimbly leaps before,
Thoughtless of peril— ’tis the trusty guide,
Who leads a train of bold adventurers,
To the cold shadowy Cave of Death ! ⁽⁸⁾
Cloistered behind the howling Cataract,
And guarded by strong gusts of blinding rain
And bleak tornadoes ; where dun Night and Horror,
Sit enthroned in the long silent solitude of Centuries,
Tbe Spectre Genii of that VAST UNKNOWN  ! !
But where is it in the wide range of Earth,
That man’s ambition or his curious research,
Tempts not his eye to wonder or his little foot to roam !
In a frail nut-shell with a film of thread for wings,
He scuds the rugged, conquered Ocean, when and where he wills—
Beards the grim Bear crouched in his den.
And robs him of his fur to wander warmly,
Over Polar snows and Pyramids of Ice !
Burdens the Camel’s back and roves,
The boundless deserts of the burning East.
Now starts the Bengal tiger from his bed of reeds,
And now pursues the barb’d Leviathan,
Along the blood-empurpled Sea !
Now leaps the Highland hunter of the wintry Alps,
Its glacier ravines with his iron spear,
And now gropes darkly among slimy sculls
And scaly sharks and all the myriad phantom-forms,
That gleam and flit in noiseless terror through
The watery wastes ; to gem the casket of a Prince’s pride,
Or bind the brow of beauty with the Persian pearl ! ⁽⁹⁾
Climbs Chimborazo, and unfurls his banner
On its frosty peak—Scales Ætna’s lava-crags,
And loiters fearlessly among
The smoking cinders of its Earthquake-fires !
In the deep mine he flares his torch,
And digs his sacrilegious way thro’ entomb’d Cities ; ⁽¹⁰⁾
And when lost for new discoveries on Earth,
Columbus-like leaves the old world,
And safely in his Air-Ship voyages the clouds,
While frightened eagles scream beneath.
His Heaven-directed Car ! !

                  *                   *               *

Tradition tells that in the olden time,
When the red forest-deer play’d in his antler’d strength
And browsed in freedom on the tender bud,
Where now the heifer lows responsive to the milk-maid’s call,
And crops contentedly the planted blade ;
When the unlettered Red-man, ignorant of titles
Called these woods his hunting-grounds,
And leaning on his bow here bent his head
To the Great Spirit ; then, one of his sun-burnt tribe
A woman, in the light beach canoe of those rude days
Was seen dipping in quick irregular stroke
A Chieftain’s paddle through the waves,
To speed her brittle boat beyond the Rapids,
To the distant shore.    In vain—
She never more shall pull the berry from the bush,
Or pluck the purple grape ;
Nor with her tinsell’d moccason press fragrance,
From the honied wild flowers of her native hills !
Like a fleet arrow from the finger of her own
Her husband-chief, so darts the whirring skiff,
Adown its swift descent.
She with the noble calmness of the Indian Brave,
When valor falls a prisoner to fate,
Intrepidly erect sat singing her death-song,
Her arms folded on her breast, her paddle at her feet !
On, on, they fly—till nearing the dread brink,
Young Ataleusa rose, her long black hair
Streaming dishevel’d in the whistling breeze ;
Then uttering one shrill funeral shriek,
Leaped like a wounded fawn down to her
Deep-dug dungeon grave ! ⁽¹¹⁾

                  *                   *               *

Niagara ! What nameless thoughts, what mystic feelings
Of Immensity, throb thro’ the reeling brain and thrill
With new pulsations thro’ the trembling heart,
Of him who gazes downward from thy battlements.
And hears the deaf’ning deluge of thy roar !
Imagination charmed and startled quits
Her anchorite-cell, and wondering contemplates
Creations animate with all the elements of life,
Which her inspired conceptions, Proteus-visions,
And her talismanic power, had never conjured
With the magic of her mightiest spells !
And still, thou paragon of picturesque sublimity,
Nature’s great Panorama of her works, thou flowest on
Unnoticed by the bard, and none hath writ,
Thy Giant grandeur on the deathless scroll ! ⁽¹²⁾
O! that the noble Exile of ignoble courts,
Who roamed in sandal-shoon the classic shores
Of slavish climes, and with his Sea-shell lyre,
Lulled envy with her Argus-eye asleep ;
Forced jealous Jeffrey with repentant hand to wreath,
The laurel ’round the brow he scorned and scarr’d,
And witch’d the world with passioned song—
O that his silken sail had turned from Scio’s Isles,
And sought beneath the Western pilot star a home,
And shunn’d a sepulchre ! ⁽¹³⁾
Then for the muffled drum and chaunted prayer,
The toll of bells and minute-gun of woe,
That moaned thro’ Missilonghi’s streets her widow’d grief ;
The generous welcome would have warmly rung
Along the white sands of Columbia’s coast,
And Freemen hailed a brother on the beach,
Where Suliots wept a warrior on his bier !
Then where Velino flashes in the Harold’s verse,
Thy name Niagara would now have beamed
The Iris of his page ! But tho’ the Poet-Hero
Of the captive Greek, wove not thy mem’ry with
His glorious fame, must then no minstrel dare
Because in ruder rhyme, the spirit-kindling theme !
Shall every babbling brook, creeping cascade
And drowsy torrent, in a foreign soil,
Be echoed in its infant murmurs
From the scholar’s sounding line, and thou alone,
The matchless King of Cataracts whose vast
Reverberations rock the quivering hills remain,
Unhonor’d and unsung !  Columbia!  Must thy Sons
Ungrateful to thy call desert the Parent-land
Of forest, flood, and legendary lore, to strut
With bearded lip ⁽¹⁴⁾ the corridores of Dons and Dukes,
Catch inspiration from the cobwebs of Monastic aisles,
Romantic sit in gondolas and skim the fetid scurf
Of sweet Canals, while listening with an English ear
To Tuscan ballads from a boatman’s lungs !
Must Freedom’s ramparts washed by waves,
That come careering from the far-off fields
Where Liberty nail’d fast her flag of stars,
And Victory crown’d her Perry on the foreman’s deck
Neglected crumble in no chronicle recorded,
While her genius in the Alhambra charms,
And like a diamond glitters thro’
The marble ruins and rubbish of Castile !
Shall trans-Atlantic fancy weep the young Gertrude, ⁽¹⁵⁾
And find in Western Wyoming a paradise,
While native talent flirts in masquerade
At Carnivals, or penseroso woos
Venitian lashes on the “Bridge of Sighs “! ! ! ⁽¹⁶⁾

                  *                   *               *
Pilgrims of Nature ! Ye who love to wander out
Among the old blue mountains,
And to sit on ruined rocks at eventide
In wizard thought, and listen to the vesper-chime
Of whispering tree-tops and the tuneful waterfall ;
Who see sweet beauty in the blossom’d grove,
And hear rare melody among its stirring leaves—
Who find strange pleasure in the moonlit dell,
And feel ‘a rapture on the lonely shore :’
Leave Italy’s soft sunsets to her pensive maids,
Her Roman relics to the Antiquary —
Alps and Appenines and the vine-festooned hills of France,
Stern Scotia’s lochs and heather, and the sunny Rhine
And red-lipp’d peasant girls and mountain bugle-notes
Of Switzerland, and journey to,
The happy Empire of the spangled flag !
And when ye shall have trod the mossy Island
Of the Indian dead ⁽¹⁷⁾ where guardian quiet watches,
Over the green burial-place of Warriors,
Climbed these towering hills or mused among,
The shady chambers of their Caves ;
When ye have looked down from this Dover-cliff,
Where Peace sits smiling on her throne of clouds,
And waves her Rainbow-banner over War—
Then heard the Æolian minstrelsy of that
Surge-sounding Harp, whose Ocean tones
Shall sing and sigh unearthly music to your ear :
Ye shall confess it worthy of your pilgrimage,
And the poor tribute of the Poets praise !

Source:  William H. Coyle. Falls of Niagara, as Seen From the Table Rock. Jacksonville: Printed by Calvin Goudy, 1835

On April 18, 1835 the Cincinnati Mirror published a critique of this poem, signed “G.”  The editor at the time, William Davis Gallagher, often signed his contributions with a “G.” Click on the photos to enlarge this critique.

NOTES

Note 1

Upon the crumbling hollow sounding Rock.

The Table Rock on the Canada side is a favorite position with visitors for viewing the magnificent spectacle that there breaks on the sight. Smooth and level on its surface, it resembles the leaf of a Table, and juts out from the bank immediately over the precipice. From it the eye takes in the Rapids, the Crescent, Schlosser, and Central Falls, with Goat Island, and in fact all the range of scenery—while by planting your foot against a dwarf cedar that shoots out from its very edge, you may look directly down into the boiling gulph .
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Note 2

Of the strong Whirlpool.

About three and a half miles below the Falls. This alone is a curiosity worth a long journey.
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Note 3

Now curvets haughtily around the arena’s ring :

About the centre of the vortex there is usually visible a belt of froth, which suggested the figure of  ‘the arena’s ring .’
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Note 4

Returning homeward you may stroll thro’ Caverns.

Catlin’s, Bender’s, and others—some of the specimens of calcareous tufa there found arc remarkably rich. Stalactites pendant from the roof have also been obtained of the most beautiful formations.
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Note 5

Still further on there is a deep and hideous hole.

Called Devil’s Hole—about one hundred and fifty feet perpendicular. There is a tradition connected with this place of an Indian murder as frightful in its nature as the spot selected for its cruel perpetration.
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Note 6

From the shore, topples a slender bridge.

Terrapin Bridge—hanging immediately over the Horse-Shoe Falls. Many consider its prospect superior to that of Table Rock, and vice versa. It certainly is a point of fearful interest—suspended as you are over the very Cataract, far from shore, with the water flying and foaming under your feet, and the spray dashing into your face !—
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Note 7

A merry ride and bonny boat- !

The Ferry-boat . There is much to excite in this singular passage—the effect may be still more heightened by the ‘Canadian Boat Song’ or ‘Lord Ullin’s daughter’ especially if sung by a Lady-love at your side . An umbrella is a necessary protection here from the heavy mist that falls in incessant showers.
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Note 8

To the cold shadowy Cave of Death !

Inasmuch as Mr. Ingraham (to whom visitors aid much indebted for his graphic Manual) has called the Cave behind the American Falls the ‘Cave of the Winds,’ I have called that behind the Canadian the Cave of Death, as indicative of its danger and gloom. It is true in an oil cloth dress you may make a partial entrance—but the boundary to man’s daring here, begins almost with his first step.
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Note 9

Or bind the brow of beauty with the Persian pearl !

Alluding to the Divers in the Persian Gulph, celebrated for its pearl fisheries
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Note 10

And digs his sacrilegious way thro’ entomb’d Cities.

Herculaneum, Pompeii, and others.
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Note 11

Deep-dug dungeon grave !

I have altered the version of the story in two particulars—Preferring a young to an old squaw, and an honorable heroic death, to an incredible escape. Believing my heroine, as I do, to have been neither witch nor peri.
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Note 12

Thy Giant grandeur on the deathless scroll !

It is an astonishing fact that with so splendid a subject for the muse, none has as yet embodied its merits. True it is, in the Book of Names on either shore are multitudinous scraps of the moment, but excepting a reflection of some fifty or sixty lines by a Spanish traveler (Jose Maria Heredia) nothing in the shape of a poem has ever been attempted.—One visitor asks ” What poet will describe his feelings, and record his thoughts, as he stood here alone with God !” Another says ” It would be a noble subject for a poet; and I do hope some one of our gifted bards will tune his lyre to this theme. ” These with similar appeals, coupled to a regret that so sublime a scene should have been so long and so shamefully neglected, induced the writer to take up his scarcely fledged pen, in behalf of its slighted claims . Should his crude sketch contribute either a moment’s pleasure to his readers, or excite the attention of some ‘gifted bard ‘ to the subject, he will be satisfied and his aim accomplished.

[Note from the curator of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project: As of January, 2026 when this poem was added, of the 700 poems on the site, there were 27 published prior to 1836. The Canadian Book of Names that he alludes to were kept at Table Rock House, excerpts of which were published in the Table Rock Album. Poems from the album can be seen on the Table Rock Album page on this website ] 

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Note 13

And shunn’d a sepulchre !

It was Lord Byron’s settled intention to have visited our infant Republic ; but especially while enlisted for the independence of Greece. In a letter on that topic he says, “I will go to the United States, and procure from that free and enlightened government to set the example of recognising the federation of Greece as an independent state .” For a further opinion of our Country, vide the IV Canto of his Childe.
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Note 14

With bearded lip the corridores of Dons and Dukes.

Alias. Mostacho—This hairy honor, is reckoned by some as indisputable evidence of a chivalrous spirit and noble blood’—and as such is frequently shipp’d on a return voyage, by American Tourists—Few however of our peaceful Democratic Cits, wore this Billy-Goat distinction until the arrival of the Poles! but then Ye Gods ! what an admiration of the Patriots and their upper lip ! O, what lathering and laboring and shaving for—the exile’s beard ! Bear’s oil, rose ! etc.
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Note 15

Shall trans-Atlantic fancy weep the young Gertrude.

See Campbell’s ‘Gertrude of Wyoming.’
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Note 16

Venitian lashes on the “Bridge of Sighs” . ! !

This mania-itinerant of Students (Novelists included) for foreign scenery, characters, and events, which have become absolutely soiled and threadbare by mere fingering, should be cured if advice wont answer, by confinement and low diet in Asylums for literary fugitives. By this is meant not only the ‘in propria persona’ loco-motion on the Continent, but the illicit pedlaring in such smuggled goods for home consumption. Have we not sufficient of the raw material for the manufacture of fabrics as novel as they might be fine ? — true — but then we must learn the trade abroad. And has the style and texture of some of our late works been essentially improved by giving them the foreign stamp ? The truth is we are sick of the gingerbread and pastry of French and Italian Cook-shops — give us some of the milk and honey of our own country .
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Note 17

Of the Indian dead where guardian quiet watches.

There have been several Indian skeletons dug up on Goat Island.
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Niagara’s canon, swept by waters grand!
No gorge like thine, nor depths, the mighty hand
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Of time hath wrought.

Thy cataract stupendous is, and fierce;
No human voice or sound can ever pierce
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Its deaf’ning roar.

Thy seething currents rend with awful might
Great rocks, that nature in chaotic night
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Did rear on high.

A whirlpool deep within thy walls doth hiss,
And, raging ’round, sinks down in dark abyss
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡To unknown depths.

Around Ontario’s blue and wide domain,
No mountains check, nor lofty barriers chain.
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Thine outlet vast.

In the great ocean’s infinite expanse
Thy volumes rest, and with their powers, enhance
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡The vasty deep.

Source: R. Lespinasse. Notes on Niagara, 2nd ed.  Chicago: R. Lespinasse, Publisher, 1884

Also published in Johnson, Richard L. (ed).  Niagara: Its History, Incidents and Poetry. Washington: Walter Neale General Book Publisher, 1898

The author’s name, Wilhelm Meister, is probably a pseudonym, as Meister is the protagonist of two of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novels.