I hear the thunderous thud, the muffled roar
I see the blinding, wheeling, smiting mists,
The greens, the grays, purples, and amethysts,
From Heaven’s wide palm thy frightened cataracts pour,
And I look up beneath them and adore.
Above me hang chain lightnings on the wrists
Of summer tempests. In the awesome lists
Of contests are the thunders and thy shore.
Beneath thy quivering riven cliff I lie
And gaze into the lightning and the sky
But I hear only thee and touch and see
A hand which undergirds immensity.
Thou speakest much, but speaketh most of him;
God, God, God walks on thy watery rim.
Source: Charles Mason Dow. Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls. Albany: State of New York, 1921. p 825
Originally published in Joseph Cook. Overtones: a Book of Verse. New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1903
THE WATER TALKED TO THE TURBINE ‡‡AT THE INTAKE’S COUCHANT KNEE:
Brother, thy mouth is darkness ‡‡Devouring me.
I rush at the whirl of thy bidding; ‡‡I pour and spend
Through the wheel-pit’s nether tempest. ‡‡Brother, the end?
Before fierce days of tent and javelin, ‡‡Before the cloudy kings of Ur,
Before the Breath upon the waters, ‡‡My splendors were.
Red hurricanes of roving worlds, ‡‡Huge wallow of the uncharted Sea,
The formless births of fluid stars, ‡‡Remember me.
A glacial dawn, the smoke of rainbows, ‡‡The swiftness of the canoned west,
The steadfast column of white volcanoes, ‡‡Leap from my breast.
But now, subterranean, mirthless, ‡‡I tug and strain,
Beating out a dance thou hast taught me ‡‡With penstock, cylinder, vane.
I am more delicate than moonlight, ‡‡Grave as the thunder’s rocking brow;
I am genesis, revelation, ‡‡Yet less than thou.
By this I adjure thee, brother, ‡‡Beware to offend! For the least, the dumbfounded, the conquered, ‡‡Shall judge in the end.
THE TURBINE TALKED TO THE MAN ‡‡AT THE SWITCHBOARD’S CRYPTIC KEY:
Brother, thy touch is whirlwind ‡‡Consuming me.
I revolve at the pulse of thy finger. ‡‡Millions of power I flash
For the muted and ceaseless cables ‡‡And the engine’s crash.
Like Samson, fettered, blindfolded, ‡‡I sweat at my craft;
But I build a temple I know not, ‡‡Driver and ring and shaft.
Wheat-field and tunnel and furnace, ‡‡They tremble and are aware,
But beyond thou compellest me, brother, ‡‡Beyond these, where?
Singing like sunrise on battle, ‡‡I travail as hills that bow;
I am wind and fire of prophecy, ‡‡Yet less than thou.
By this I adjure thee, brother, ‡‡Be slow to offend! For the least, the blindfolded, the conquered, ‡‡Shall judge in the end.
THE MAN STROVE WITH HIS MAKER ‡‡AT THE CLANG OF THE POWER-HOUSE DOOR:
Lord, Lord, Thou art unsearchable, ‡‡Troubling me sore.
I have thrust my spade to the caverns; ‡‡I have yoked the cataract;
I have counted the steps of the planets.‡‡ ‡‡What thing have I lacked?
I am come to a goodly country, ‡‡Where, putting my hand to the plow,
I have not considered the lilies. ‡‡Am I less than Thou?
THE MAKER SPAKE WITH THE MAN ‡‡AT THE TERMINAL-HOUSE OF THE LINE:
For delight wouldst thou have desolation ‡‡O brother mine,
And flaunt on the highway of nations ‡‡A byword and sign?
Have I fashioned thee then in my image ‡‡And quickened thy spirit of old,
If thou spoil my garments of wonder ‡‡For a handful of gold?
I wrought for thy glittering possession ‡‡The waterfall’s glorious lust;
It is genesis, revelation,— ‡‡Wilt thou grind it to dust?
Niagara, the genius of freedom, ‡‡A creature for base command!
Thy soul is the pottage thou sellest; ‡‡Withhold thy hand.
Or take him and bind him and make him ‡‡A magnificent slave if thou must —
But remember that beauty is treasure ‡‡And gold is dust.
Yea, thou, returned to the fertile ground ‡‡In the humble days to be,
Shalt learn that he who slays a splendor ‡‡Has murdered Me.
By this I adjure thee, brother, ‡‡Beware to offend!
For the least, the extinguished, the conquered, ‡‡Shall judge in the end.
Mrs. Phebe A Hanaford, Universalist Minister, women’s rights activist, lesbian, and author
Awe-struck I stand
Beside this avalanche of waves, and hear
The voice of God from out these watery depths.
Emotion-full, my soul in vain essays
To speak the thoughts that by this scene have birth.
Hark! to the voice of many waters here:
Like that great voice in Patmos heard by John,
It speaks of power, resistless energy,
And mighty purpose unconfined by man.
To me it speaks of God’s almighty love,
Forever surging round the human soul:
The rocks of sin, the shoals of ignorance,
But bid those waves of love in tumult rise,
In rapids like old ocean’s storm-waves, or, as here,
In one vast water-sheet, the cataract’s plunge.
Thus shall it flow till time shall be no more,
And every soul is borne upon its waves,
All cleansed by its pure waters, to the land
Where, joyful, they shall all be moored at last.
Source: Charles Mason Dow. Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls. Albany: State of New York, 1921. p. 756-757
Originally published in Mrs. Phebe A. Hanaford. From Shore to Shore and Other Poems. Boston: D. B. Russell; San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1871.
Also published in Johnson, Richard L. (ed). Niagara: Its History, Incidents and Poetry. Washington: Walter Neale General Book Publisher, 1898 (transcribed by memory as Johnson didn’t have a copy of it when his book was going to press)
Horseshoe Falls with a Storm, 1847, by Henry Samuel Davis, hand-tinting by Erna Jahnke. Courtesy Niagara Falls Public Library
Niagara captive! And by ribbons led!
His mighty force with that of toiling head
And hand to join. So changed since ancient days
When red men chanted hymns of praise;
In flower-laden white canoe
Each spring their fairest maiden sent into
The Thunder of the Waters.
Niagara an adult and to Effort bred —
No more to play the livelong day,
But proudly share the sweat and grime
Of stalwart manhood’s laboring prime.
The evergrowing purpose runs; —
Earth’s wealth is measured, not the sun’s;
The stewards of great treasure may
Not waste Tomorrow’s dire need
For Pleasure’s or for Profit’s greed.
Oh, Hercules, still at thy labors keep!
Canst take the raging current from the flood
And swiftly, silent ’round a cable sweep?
Ye Seven Wonders of the ancient world,
Long since into oblivion hurled,
Your kings and gods born to commemorate —
‘Tis to the people do we dedicate
The Wonders of Today.
Source: Charles Mason Dow. Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls. Albany: State of New York, 1921. p840-841.
Originally published in Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering, March, 1913
Through drifty silver smoke, that’s opalescent,
The soft-spun rainbows curve, each one a crescent
And we who stand, where once the hoary otter
Trailed sooty moles, behold the self-same water
And revel in the tender-tinted blur
That blows about this perpendicular
Descent these maiden-veils, so evanescent —
One feels the beautiful, our God, a-stir.
From dim concealment whips of color leap,
His many glories, powers, find voice and keep
The living spirit conscious of the deep.
The mind can pierce the past — the fragrant wood —
Each wild flower with its aureole, a snood,
In convents green that shield each sisterhood :
The tallish primrose in its shapely scone A candle for some barren place of stone. We see how driven drifts of spray can linger In opal moonlight, star-companioned : finger
The budding pine tree, tipped with emerald crosses, And underneath, the cool and long drenched mosses — We’ve touched the tarnished rocks and silver bosses : There seems no sadness — other songs malinger.
Again one sees a twisting vine, a rope Of wild growth twining on a footless slope, Men descending, English Lord, or cotter, To catch this very view of misting water. . . Upon our hands spilt dews, like some baptism To honor daily idylls, heroism ; And early Warriorswith their many nations Who gave their Mystic One their bright oblations Of fruit and flower and youth, like ancient Stoic — (Soul-courage may not deem itself heroic) —
And now we make ourselves our consecrations.
Within these organ-tones of color-thunder There tides to mind an old, yet-dim wonder : Man’s NOT the spider forever clambering down Old causeways where forbidding rocks shall frown, Nor yet the soldier with defiant plume. . . (How many phantoms in this dull-green gloom) — But here he stands so near the Farther Border
He finds in seeming chaos, love’s deep order, Serenity behind the cataclysm, The same sweet rainbow in each haunting prism — In all this welter, sheerest symmetry, And then beyond — God’s choice simplicity. Beyond the auric smoke and dazzling dews, Beyond these organ-tones that far diffuse Their song, there’s ever pierceless Mystery,
For far within Man finds himself and Thee.
But there’s more beauty than’s interpreted; (Beyond the song that’s heard, the song that’s hid,) And if there’s Immanence within the mists And Radiance where moon-gold weaves and twists Strange forms for eyes, there’s greater light within The heart of man and in the soul there’s been Implanted Truth — oh, so imperative — That we, in turn, are kin not fugitive As slaves, and not idolatrous, But His Beloved, who asks all love of us, As mists shall hide the waters from the sight This beauty-veil conceals, reveals, His Light.
Through drifty silver smoke, that’s opalescent,
The soft-spun rainbows curve, each one a crescent
And we, who stand where once the hoary otter
Trailed sooty moles, behold the self-same water
And revel in the tender-tinted blur
That blows about this perpendicular
Descent these maiden-veils, so evanescent
One feels the beautiful, our God, a-stir.
From dim concealment whips of color leap,
His many glories, powers, find voice and keep
The living spirit conscious of the Deep.
watson mist
Source: Evelyn M. Watson. Poems of the Niagara Frontier. New York: Dean & Company, 1929.
