View of Niagara Falls from the American Side, 1850. by A.M. Fraser. Colour tint by Jane Merryweather. Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
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
“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.”
Hannah Flagg Gould
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
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.
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
Behold! again I view thee, in thy majesty and might,
Thy proud sheet flashing in the blaze of morning’s glorious light ;
I see thee maddened in thy fall, and pale with hoary rage,
And fretting in thy passion that hath boiled from age to age.
Like thunder on my startled ear, thine everlasting roar
Hath broken, and reverberates from shore to echoing shore,
Continuous and fearful—giant power in its tone,
That shakes the earth’s foundations, and rives the solid stone !
How tremulous beneath the shock the fearful earth hath grown ;
Reeling beneath the mighty plunge, it sighs with ceaseless moan.
Now rush thy waves with frenzy wild, in foam of dazzling white,
Now placidly they sweep along with ever changeful light.
O, wondrous power ! O, giant strength ! how fearful, to behold,
Outstretched on yon o’erhanging crag, thy mad waves downward rolled ;
To look adown the cavernous abyss that yawns beneath—
To see the feathery spray flash forth in many a glittering wreath !
Voluminous and ceaseless still, forever swift descend
Thy waters, in their headlong course—then, turning, heavenward wend ;
Now, disenthralled, their essence hath its spirit shape resumed,
Bright, bodiless, and pure, its flight to yon empyrean plumed !
Source: John Breakenridge. The Crusades, and Other Poems. Kingston: John Rowlands, 1846.
