Believed to be David Paul Brown by John Robinson from the collections of The Walters Art Museum
Describe it ! ‡‡Who can ere describe ‡‡The lightning’s flash — the thunder’s roll.
Say what is Life, or what is Death, ‡‡Or paint the portrait of the Soul?
Describe the rainbow in the spray, ‡‡The rapids in their wild career —
Raging like ravenous beasts of prey, ‡‡While all creation shrinks with fear?
Go sketch and paint the humblest flower ‡‡That lends its fragrance to the grove;
Go trace the feeblest star that gleams ‡‡From the cerulean vaults above.
Exhaust thyself, vain-glorious man, ‡‡On scenes and subjects fit for thee,
Nor dare presumptuously to scan ‡‡The wondrous works of Eternity.
The works of an almighty hand ‡‡None can depict — though all adore !
Terrific — bold and beautiful. ‡‡They breathe the sov’reignty of power.
O God ! it seems to me most strange ‡‡That any man so mad should be
To doubt, to disbelieve Thy power ‡‡When thus, Creation speaks to Thee.
Source: Charles Mason Dow. Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls. Albany: State of New York, 1921
Originally published in Springs, Water-falls, Sea-bathing Resorts, and Mountain Scenery of the United States and Canada. New York: J. Disturnell, 1855
O THOU great priest of all the nations, thou
Whose immemorial chanting shakes the sky !
The suns of ages on thy reverend brow
Linger, in glorious life, immortally.
I come again to hear, eternal tone
Of immolated waters, where the leap
Of thy vast splendor makes perpetual moan
And lifts unwearied litanies from the deep.
And lo!
I find thy priestly waters clad in snow,
And where thy choral rapids used to sweep
Surpliced in hills of frost, like acolytes, they sleep.
All rubrical, in white,
Hills, waves and trees are vestured deep with light
As for high splendors of some solemn feast.
The mighty altar of thy hills, aglow
With ceremonial show,
Twinkles with mimic suns; thy tapers bright
Astound the reverent sight,
And wistful, sedulous clouds of swirling mist
Have never ceased
To hang the shivering trees, by sunbeams kissed,
With wonderful bright robes and baldachins of fleece.
O the vast arc of that white altar, glowing
With crystal columns of thy frozen streams,
Gigantic pillars, halted in their flowing,
Lucent with lightenings of marmoreal gleams,
Their flutings vaster than old Egypt’s glory,
Chiseled to fretted arabesques of frost, —
In the white windings of that splendor hoary
The wildered sunbeams wander and are lost.
Ah, bleak and beautiful, and clear
With more than earthly glitterings of delight,
Thine ice-built altar here
Quivers with marvels of celestial light,
Kissed
With wild and tremulous mist,
And streaming clouds of glory from its height.
Niagara Falls Illuminated, Winter, 1925
Around, in robes of state,
The reverential forests stand,
With their deep, paradisal fruitings hoar.
Obsequious they wait
While, chanting low, the waters deck them more,
Strewing their crystal splendors on the land,
Weaving the woods with many a strange device
With snowy hands and crackling stays of ice,
Until amazing glories flash and flow
Where the white forests glow,
And all the common world is covered under
With hills of spendor and with vales of wonder !
The vaporous incense of thy restless wave
Is whirled in clouds of glory, freezing far,
On every jutting crag the restless play
Of thy swift, eager water piles away
A heap of gelid foam. The furious war
Of freezing torrents, teased to flinging spray,
Hath left thy stones as lovely as a star.
Where the pale stretches of thine ice fields are,
Hark, the trapped surges impotently rave,
Roar furious, prisoned in their icy cave.
And still
The steadfast waters keep their constant will
On pouring towards the brink of their desire.
The sacrificial torrent whelmed and lost
In wonderful, deep frost,
Leaps onward with its immemorial fire.
With all its ancient joy and all its fear
The liquid litany of the waves I hear,
And echo through the white, impassive walls
The solemn verberations of the falls.
No fetters of imperious cold
This sacrificial surge can stay
From the wild winter’s freezing hold
The eager torrent leaps away,
And through the far-flung ice resistless poured
The ever valiant wave, to win its way,
Shakes the white lightenings of its silver sword!
Source: The Catholic World, vol 110, January 1920, p 496-497
Stamp honouring Archibald Lampman, issued July 7, 1989
Heavy with haze that merges and melts free ‡‡Into the measureless depth on either hand, ‡‡The full day rests upon the luminous land
In one long noon of golden reverie.
Now hath the harvest come and gone with glee. ‡‡The shaven fields stretch smooth and clean away, ‡‡Purple and green, and yellow, and soft gray,
Chequered with orchards. Farther still I see
Towns and dim villages, whose roof-tops fill ‡‡The distant mist, yet scarcely catch the view.
Thorold set sultry on its plateau’d hill, ‡‡And far to westward, where yon pointed towers
Rise faint and ruddy from the vaporous blue, ‡‡Saint Catharines, city of the host of flowers.
Source: Lampman, Archibald. (ed. & with a memoir by Duncan Campbell Scott) The Poems of Archibald Lampman. Toronto; George N. Morang & Co., 1900.
The Lampman family homestead, originally known as Mountain Point, became the present day Woodland Conservation Area.
Francis Abbott Drowning in Niagara River. From Osgoode Bradbury, Francis Abbott; or, The Hermit of Niagara: A Tale of the Old and New World. 1846
“Though in thy veil of mist thou hid’st from me, ‡‡Thy glistening footsteps have I hither tracked : Here on this rock I sit and wait for thee — ‡‡Thee love, thou Spirit of the Cataract.
O list again my tale of constancy !
“I’ve dreamed of thee since boyhood. I have thought ‡‡Of thee at midnight, when beneath the stars
The whole earth slept, and thou hast been inwrought ‡‡Into my daytime reveries on the cloudy cars
Which sailed the sky with happy breezes fraught.
“And I have heard thy voice come calling me ‡‡When underneath the rustling beech I lay,
And watched the wave that to the terraced knee ‡‡Of the green hill leaped, hound-like, then away
Along the sands went gambolling toward thee.
“And I have thought that all things sought for thee ; ‡‡For thee the Sun climbed up the eastern shore,
Fresh bathed from the Atlantic’s purity, ‡‡And weaved thee rainbow garlands, and threw o’er
Thy form, of sheen and gold a gorgeous drapery.
“I have not sought the circles of the gay, ‡‡Where wanton beauty half unveiled is whirled
In the mad dance, by passionate youths that pay ‡‡Their amorous glances ; nor to breasts impearled
Nor all their wealth of charms are eyes forbid to stray.
“Nor could halls of learning, — nor the stage ‡‡Rich with enchantment, where the poet’s soul
Hath shed its affluence, — nor the voice of sage ‡‡Dewy with scripture, weaken thy control,
Nor me from my devotion disengage.
“Nor love, nor wine, nor song, nor power, nor gold ‡‡Nor the sweet glimpses of domestic bliss
That wooed me oft ! No, thy caresses cold ‡‡And pure embraces, and the frequent kiss
That falls like rain, dearer than all I hold !
“Thou hast all power, all passion in thyself ‡‡Thou Spirit of the Cataract, and I gaze
Where leap the waters from their rocky shelf ‡‡Down the abyss to thee with no amaze,
For thy charms lure sea-sprite and mountain-elf.
“The spirits of the mountain peaks, that keep ‡‡The hidden treasures of the mighty west,
Steal down the moonlit rivulets to peep ‡‡Upon the beauty of thy snowy breast
Unveiled amid the tossings of thy sleep.
“The spirits that collect the dews, and fill ‡‡The broad lakes, fill them for my love alone,
Their purity but equals thine : distil ‡‡The stars on thee their light, and o’er thy throne
Scatter the radiance of their holy bill.
“No more delay, my destiny divine, ‡‡But give the token of my speedy bliss :
I know my life shall be drawn into thine ‡‡Even as my whole heart already is :
And yet I wait the anticipated sign.
“Three happy yet three weary months have seen ‡‡Me waiting in my strange novitiate,
O love, thou knowest how constant I have been ‡‡Watching and waiting at the diamond gate
That flashes me and my pure love between.
“She comes ! She comes ! I see the radiant star ‡‡Upon her brow — the glory of her face !
She comes ! She comes ! she lifts the silver bar !
O love, in thine my arms I interlace,
And we forever more united are !”
Source: Professor James Abraham Martling. Poems of Home and Country. Boston: James H. Earle, Publisher, 1885
Joseph John Gurney Figurine by Staffordshire Pottery
Six hundred twenty thousand tuns, each minute, is the measure,
That fills thy giant bowl for us with wonder, awe, and pleasure ;
Niagara the great, the free, old Erie’s swift discharger,
The billowy breast that banished thee, but sends thee to a larger.
Ontario bids a welcome to thy foaming, gushing waters,
That freshly fill her yawning caves, and nourish all her daughters.
Sunshine and rain contend for thee, thou plaything of all weathers,
Thy falling flood of glass and pearls breaks into fairest feathers ;
But where the deeper billows roll o’er the centre of thy crescent,
Thy vest is of liquid emerald, with native snows florescent.
Thy stream below is a floating field of winter’s purest whiteness,
Till it melts away into green and grey, rejoicing in its brightness.
Clouds of thy own creation rise, in wild array, around thee,
And in her zone of magic hues, the radiant bow hath bound thee.
Farewell, flow on — in bygone worlds thy veteran locks were hoary,
And forests wild, untrod by man, have sung thine ancient glory.
A meaner muse of modern days, now ventures to admire thee,
Her music thou may’st well despise — thy own shall never tire thee.
Source: Joseph John Gurney. A Journey in North America, Described in Familiar Letters to Amelia Opie. Norwich: Printed for Private Circulation, 1841. p. 320
Included in the anthology: Charles Mason Dow. Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls. Albany: State of New York, 1921
