which so inspires the poet in older lands. He was right in his fact, but
absurd in his fault-finding. It has somewhere been said of him, that
Niagara Falls was the only thing he found in America which overcame his
self-importance; but we must remember his youth, the flatteries on which
he had fed at home and the crudities of American life at that time. For
a quarter of a century after Tom Moore's visit there was much in the
crass assertiveness of American democracy which was as ridiculous in its
way as the Old-World ideas of class and social distinctions were in
their way--and vastly more vulgar and offensive. Read, in evidence, Mrs.
Trollope and Capt. Basil Hall, two of America's severest and sincerest
critics. It should be put down to Tom Moore's credit, too, that before
he died he admitted to Washington Irving and to others that his writings
on America were the greatest sin of his early life.[80]
Like Moore, Alexander Wilson felt America's lack of a poet; and, like
Barlow and Humphreys and Freneau and others of forgotten fame, he
undertook--like them again, unsuccessfully--to supply the lack. There is
something pathetic--or grotesque, as we look at it--in the patriotic
efforts of these commonplace men to be great for their country's sake.
To Europe's shores renowned in deathless song,
asks Wilson,
Must all the honors of the bard belong?
And rural Poetry's enchanting strain
Be only heard beyond th' Atlantic main?
Yet Nature's charms that bloom so lovely here,
Unhailed arrive, unheeded disappear;
While bare black heaths and brooks of half a mile
Can rouse the thousand bards of Britain's Isle.
There, scarce a stream creeps down its narrow bed,
There scarce a hillock lifts its little head,
Or humble hamlet peeps their glades among
But lives and murmurs in immortal song.
Our Western world, with all its matchless floods,
Our vast transparent lakes and boundless woods,
Stamped with the traits of majesty sublime,
Unhonored weep the silent lapse of time,
Spread their wild grandeur to the unconscious sky,
In sweetest seasons pass unheeded by;
While scarce one Muse returns the songs they gave,
Or seeks to snatch their glories from the grave.
This solicitude by the early American writers, lest the poetic themes of
their country should go unsung, contrasts amusingly, as does Moore's
ill-natured complaining, with the prophetic assurance of Bishop
Berkeley's famous lines, written half a century or so before, in
allusion to America:
The muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better time,
Producing subjects worthy fame.
. . . . . . . . .
Westward the course of empire takes its way, ...
I have found no other pilgrim poets making Niagara their theme, until
the War of 1812 came to create heroes and leave ruin along the frontier,
and stir a few patriotic singers to hurl back defiance to the British
hordes. Iambic defiance, unless kindled by a grand genius, is a poor
sort of fireworks, even when it undertakes to combine patriotism and
natural grandeur. Certainly something might be expected of a poet who
sandwiches Niagara Falls in between bloody battles, and gives us the
magnificent in nature, the gallant in warfare and the loftiest
patriotism in purpose, the three strains woven in a triple paean of
passion, ninety-four duodecimo pages in length. Such a work was offered
to the world at Baltimore in 1818, with this title-page: "Battle of
Niagara, a Poem Without Notes, and Goldau, or the Maniac Harper. Eagles
and Stars and Rainbows. By Jehu O' Cataract, author of 'Keep Cool.'" I
have never seen "Keep Cool," but it must be very different from the
"Battle of Niagara," or it belies its name. The fiery Jehu O' Cataract
was John Neal.[81]
The "Battle of Niagara," he informs the reader, was written when he was
a prisoner; when he "felt the victories of his countrymen." "I have
attempted," he says, "to do justice to American scenery and American
character, not to versify minutiae of battles." The poem has a metrical
introduction and four cantos, in which is told, none too lucidly, the
story of the battle of Niagara; with such flights of eagles,
scintillation of stars and breaking of rainbows, that no brief quotation
can do it justice. In style it is now Miltonic, now reminiscent of
Walter Scott. The opening canto is mainly an apostrophe to the Bird, and
a vision of glittering horsemen. Canto two is a dissertation on Lake
Ontario, with word-pictures of the primitive Indian. The rest of the
poem is devoted to the battle near the great cataract--and throughout
all are sprinkled the eagles, stars and rainbows. Do not infer from this
characterization that the production is wholly bad; it is merely a good
specimen of that early American poetry which was just bad enough to
escape being good.
A brief passage or two will sufficiently illustrate the author's trait
of painting in high colors. He is a word-impressionist whose brush, with
indiscreet dashes, mars the composition. I select two passages
descriptive of the battle:
The drum is rolled again. The bugle sings
And far upon the wind the cross flag flings
A radiant challenge to its starry foe,
That floats--a sheet of light!--away below,
Where troops are forming--slowly in the night
Of mighty waters; where an angry light
Bounds from the cataract, and fills the skies
With visions--rainbows--and the foamy dyes
That one may see at morn in youthful poets' eyes.
Niagara! Niagara! I hear
Thy tumbling waters. And I see thee rear
Thy thundering sceptre to the clouded skies:
I see it wave--I hear the ocean rise,
And roll obedient to thy call. I hear
The tempest-hymning of thy floods in fear;
The quaking mountains and the nodding trees--
The reeling birds and the careering breeze--
The tottering hills, unsteadied in thy roar;
Niagara! as thy dark waters pour
One everlasting earthquake rocks thy lofty shore!
. . . . . . . . .
The cavalcade went by. The day hath gone;
And yet the soldier lives; his cheerful tone
Rises in boisterous song; while slowly calls
The monarch spirit of the mighty falls:
Soldier, be firm! and mind your watchfires well;
Sleep not to-night!
The following picture of the camp at sunset, as the reveille rings over
the field, and Niagara's muffled drums vibrate through the dusk,
presents many of the elements of true poetry:
Low stooping from his arch, the glorious sun
Hath left the storm with which his course begun;
And now in rolling clouds goes calmly home
In heavenly pomp adown the far blue dome.
In sweet-toned minstrelsy is heard the cry,
All clear and smooth, along the echoing sky,
Of many a fresh-blown bugle full and strong,
The soldier's instrument! the soldier's song!
Niagara, too, is heard; his thunder comes
Like far-off battle--hosts of rolling drums.
All o'er the western heaven the flaming clouds
Detach themselves and float like hovering shrouds.
Loosely unwoven, and afar unfurled,
A sunset canopy enwraps the world.
The Vesper hymn grows soft. In parting day
Wings flit about. The warblings die away,
The shores are dizzy and the hills look dim,
The cataract falls deeper and the landscapes swim.
Jehu O' Cataract does not always hold his fancy with so steady a rein as
this. He is prone to eccentric flights, to bathos and absurdities. His
apostrophe to Lake Ontario, several hundred lines in length, has many
fine fancies, but his luxuriant imagination continually wrecks itself on
extravagancies which break down the effect. This I think the following
lines illustrate:
... He had fought with savages, whose breath
He felt upon his cheek like mildew till his death.
. . . . . . . . .
So stood the battle. Bravely it was fought,
Lions and Eagles met. That hill was bought
And sold in desperate combat. Wrapped in flame,
Died these idolaters of bannered fame.
Three times that meteor hill was bravely lost--
Three times 'twas bravely won, while madly tost,
Encountering red plumes in the dusky air;
While Slaughter shouted in her bloody lair,
And spectres blew their horns and shook their whistling hair.
. . . . . . . . .
There are allusions to Niagara in some of the ballads of the War of
1812, one of the finest of which, "Sea and Land Victories," beginning
With half the western world at stake
See Perry on the midland lake,--
appeared in the Naval Songster of 1815, and was a great favorite half a
century or more ago. So far, however, as the last War with Great Britain
has added to our store of poetry by turning the attention of the poets
to the Niagara region as a strikingly picturesque scene of war, there is
little worthy of attention. One ambitious work is remembered, when
remembered at all, as a curio of literature. This is "The Fredoniad, or
Independence Preserved," an epic poem by Richard Emmons, a Kentuckian,
afterwards a physician of Philadelphia. He worked on it for ten years,
finally printed it in 1826, and in 1830 got it through a second edition,
ostentatiously dedicated to Lafayette. "The Fredoniad" is a history in
verse of the War of 1812; it was published in four volumes; it has forty
cantos, filling 1,404 duodecimo pages, or a total length of about 42,000
lines. The first and second cantos are devoted to Hell, the third to
Heaven, and the fourth to Detroit. About one-third of the whole work is
occupied with military operations on the Niagara frontier. Nothing from
Fort Erie to Fort Niagara escapes this meter-machine. The Doctor's
poetic feet stretch out to miles and leagues, but not a single verse do
I find that prompts to quotation; though, I am free to confess, I have
not read them all, and much doubt if any one save the infatuated author,
and perhaps his proof-reader, ever did read the whole of "The
Fredoniad."
* * * * *
No sooner was the frontier at peace, and the pathways of travel
multiplied and smoothed, than there set in the first great era of
tourist travel to Niagara. From 1825, when the opening of the Erie Canal
first made the falls easily accessible to the East, the tide of visitors
steadily swelled. In that year came one other poetizing pilgrim, from
York, now Toronto, who, returning home, published in his own city a
duodecimo of forty-six pages, entitled "Wonders of the West, or a Day at
the Falls of Niagara in 1825. A Poem. By a Canadian." The author was J.
S. Alexander, said to have been a Toronto school-teacher. It is a great
curio, though of not the least value as poetry; in fact, as verse it is
ridiculously bad. The author does not narrate his own adventures at
Niagara, but makes his descriptive and historical passages incidental to
the story of a hero named _St. Julian_. Never was the name of this
beloved patron saint of travelers more unhappily bestowed, for this _St.
Julian_ is a lugubrious, crack-brained individual who mourns the
supposed death of a lady-love, _Eleanor St. Fleur_. Other characters are
introduced; all French except a remarkable driver named _Wogee_, who
tells legends and historic incidents in as good verse, apparently, as
the author was able to produce. _St. Julian_ is twice on the point of
committing suicide; once on Queenston Heights, and again at the falls.
Just as he is about to throw himself into the river he hears his
_Ellen's_ voice--the lady, it seems, had come from France by a different
route--all the mysteries are cleared up, and the reunited lovers and
their friends decide to "hasten hence,"
Again to our dear native France,
Where we shall talk of all we saw,
At thy dread falls, Niagara.[82]
From about this date the personal adventures of individuals bound for
Niagara cease to be told in verse, and if they were they would cease to
be of much historic interest. The relation of the poets to Niagara no
longer concerns us because of its historic aspect.
* * * * *
There remains, however, an even more important division of the subject.
The review must be less narrative than critical, to satisfy the natural
inquiry, What impress upon the poetry of our literature has this
greatest of cataracts made during the three-quarters of a century that
it has been easily accessible to the world? What of the supreme in
poetry has been prompted by this mighty example of the supreme in
nature? The proposition at once suggests subtleties of analysis which
must not be entered upon in this brief survey. The answer to the
question is attempted chiefly by the historical method. A few selected
examples of the verse which relates to Niagara will, by their very
nature, indicate the logical answer to the fundamental inquiry.
There is much significance in the fact, that what has been called the
best poem on Niagara was written by one who never saw the falls.
Chronologically, so far as I have ascertained, it is the work which
should next be considered, for it appeared in the columns of a
New-England newspaper, about the time when the newly-opened highway to
the West robbed Niagara forever of her majestic solitude, and filled the
world with her praise. They may have been travelers' tales that
prompted, but it was the spiritual vision of the true poet that inspired
the lines printed in the _Connecticut Mirror_ at Hartford, about 1825,
by the delicate, gentle youth, John G. C. Brainard. It is a poem much
quoted, of a character fairly indicated by these lines:
It would seem
As if God formed thee from his "hollow hand"
And hung his bow upon thine awful front;
And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Savior's sake,
"The sound of many waters"; and bade
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,
And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks.
Measured by the strength of an Emerson or a Lowell, this is but feeble
blank verse, approaching the bombastic; but as compared with what had
gone before, and much that was to follow, on the Niagara theme, it is a
not unwelcome variation.
The soul's vision, through imagination's magic glass, receives more of
Poesy's divine light than is shed upon all the rapt gazers at the
veritable cliff and falling flood.
During the formative years of what we now regard as an established
literary taste, but which later generations will modify in turn, most
American poetry was imitative of English models. Later, as has been
shown, there was an assertively patriotic era; and later still, one of
great laudation of America's newly-discovered wonders, which in the case
of Niagara took the form of apostrophe and devotion. To the patriotic
literature of Niagara, besides examples already cited, belongs Joseph
Rodman Drake's "Niagara," printed with "The Culprit Fay, and Other
Poems" in 1835.[83] It is a poem which would strike the critical ear of
today, I think, as artificial; its sentiment, however, is not to be
impeached. The poet sings of the love of freedom which distinguishes the
Swiss mountaineer; of the sailor's daring and bravery; of the soldier's
heroism, even to death. Niagara, like the alp, the sea, and the battle,
symbolizes freedom, triumph and glory:
Then pour thy broad wave like a flood from the heavens,
Each son that thou rearest, in the battle's wild shock,
When the death-speaking note of the trumpet is given,
Will charge like thy torrent or stand like thy rock.
Let his roof be the cloud and the rock be his pillow,
Let him stride the rough mountain or toss on the foam,
Let him strike fast and well on the field or the billow,
In triumph and glory for God and his home!
Nine years after Drake came Mrs. Sigourney, who, notwithstanding her
genuine love of nature and of mankind, her sincerity and occasional
genius, was hopelessly of the sentimental school. Like Frances S.
Osgood, N. P. Willis and others now lost in even deeper oblivion, she
found great favor with her day and generation. Few things from her
ever-productive pen had a warmer welcome than the lines beginning:
Up to the table-rock, where the great flood
Reveals its fullest glory,
and her "Farewell to Niagara," concluding
... it were sweet
To linger here, and be thy worshipper,
Until death's footstep broke this dream of life.
Supremely devout in tone, her Niagara poems are commonplace in
imagination. Her fancy rarely reaches higher than the perfectly obvious.
I confess that I cannot read her lines without a vision of the lady
herself standing in rapt attitude on the edge of Table Rock, with
note-book in hand and pencil uplifted to catch the purest inspiration
from the scene before her. She is the type of a considerable train of
writers whose Niagara effusions leave on the reader's mind little
impression beyond an iterated "Oh, thou great Niagara, Oh!" Such a one
was Richard Kelsey, whose "Niagara and Other Poems," printed in London
in 1848, is likely to be encountered in old London bookshops. I have
read Mr. Kelsey's "Niagara" several times. Once when I first secured the
handsome gilt-edged volume; again, later on, to discover why I failed to
remember any word or thought of it; and again, in the preparation of
this paper, that I might justly characterize it. But I am free to
confess that beyond a general impression of Parnassian attitudinizing
and extravagant apostrophe I get nothing out of its pages. Decidedly
better are the lines "On Visiting the Falls of Niagara," by Lord
Morpeth, the Earl of Carlisle, who visited Niagara in 1841.[84] He, too,
begins with the inevitable apostrophe:
There's nothing great or bright, thou glorious fall!
Thou mayst not to the fancy's sense recall--
but he saves himself with a fairly creditable sentiment:
Oh! may the wars that madden in thy deeps
There spend their rage nor climb the encircling steeps,
And till the conflict of thy surges cease
The nations on thy bank repose in peace.
A British poet who should perhaps have mention in this connection is
Thomas Campbell, whose poem, "The Emigrant," contains an allusion to
Niagara. It was published anonymously in 1823 in the _New Monthly
Magazine_, which Campbell then edited.[85]
No poem on Niagara that I know of is more entitled to our respectful
consideration than the elaborate work which was published in 1848 by the
Rev. C. H. A. Bulkley of Mt. Morris, N. Y. It is a serious attempt to
produce a great poem with Niagara Falls as its theme. Its length--about
3,600 lines--secures to Western New York the palm for elaborate
treatment of the cataract in verse. "Much," says the author, "has been
written hitherto upon Niagara in fugitive verse, but no attempt like
this has been made to present its united wonders as the theme of a
single poem. It seems a bold adventure and one too hazardous, because of
the greatness of the subject and the obscurity of the bard; but his
countrymen are called upon to judge it with impartiality, and pronounce
its life or its death. The author would not shrink from criticism....
His object has been, not so much to describe at length the scenery of
Niagara in order to excite emotions in the reader similar to those of
the beholder, for this would be a vain endeavor, as to give a transcript
of what passes through the mind of one who is supposed to witness so
grand an achievement of nature. The difficulty," he adds, "with those
who visit this wonderful cataract is to give utterance to those feelings
and thoughts that crowd within and often, because thus pent up, produce
what may be termed the pain of delight."
Of a poem which fills 132 duodecimo pages it is difficult to give a fair
idea in a few words. There is an introductory apostrophe, followed by a
specific apostrophe to the falls as a vast form of life. Farther on the
cataract is apostrophized as a destroyer, as an historian, a warning
prophet, an oracle of truth, a tireless laborer. There are many passages
descriptive of the islands, the gorge, the whirlpool, etc. Then come
more apostrophes to the fall respecting its origin and early life. It is
viewed as the presence-chamber of God, and as a proof of Deity. Finally,
we have the cataract's hymn to the Creator, and the flood's death-dirge.
No long poem is without its commonplace intervals. Mr. Bulkley's
"Niagara" has them to excess, yet as a whole it is the work of a refined
and scholarly mind, its imagination hampered by its religious habit, but
now and than quickened to lofty flights, and strikingly sustained and
noble in its diction. Only a true poet takes such cognizance of initial
impulses and relations in nature as this:
In thy hoarse strains is heard the desolate wail
Of streams unnumbered wandering far away,
From mountain homes where, 'neath the shady rocks
Their parent springs gave them a peaceful birth.
It presents many of the elements of a great poem, reaching the climax in
the cataract's hymn to the Creator, beginning
Oh mighty Architect of Nature's home!
At about this period--to be exact, in 1848--there was published in New
York City, as a pamphlet or thin booklet, a poem entitled "Niagara," by
"A Member of the Ohio Bar," of whose identity I know nothing. It is a
composition of some merit, chiefly interesting by reason of its
concluding lines:
... Then so live,
That when in the last fearful mortal hour,
Thy wave, borne on at unexpected speed,
O'erhangs the yawning chasm, soon to fall,
Thou start not back affrighted, like a youth
That wakes from sleep to find his feeble bark
Suspended o'er Niagara, and with shrieks
And unavailing cries alarms the air,
Tossing his hands in frenzied fear a moment,
Then borne away forever! But with gaze
Calm and serene look through the eddying mists,
On Faith's unclouded bow, and take thy plunge
As one whose Father's arms are stretched beneath,
Who falls into the bosom of his God!
The close parallelism of these lines with the exalted conclusion of
"Thanatopsis" is of course obvious; but they embody a symbolism which is
one of the best that has been suggested by Niagara.
* * * * *
From the sublime to the ridiculous was never a shorter descent than in
this matter of Niagara poetry. At about the time Mr. Bulkley wrote, and
for some years after, it was the pernicious custom to keep public albums
at the Table Rock and other points at the falls, for the record of
"impressions." Needless to say, these albums filled up with rubbish. To
bad taste was added the iniquity of publication, so that future
generations may be acquainted with one of the least creditable of native
American literary whims. The editor of one of these albums, issued in
1856, lamented that "the innumerable host of visitors who have
perpetrated composition in the volumes of manuscript now before us,
should have added so little to the general stock of legitimate and
permanent literature"; and he adds--by way seemingly of adequate
excuse--that "the actual amount of frivolous nonsense which constitutes
so large a portion of the contents ... is not all to be calculated by
the specimens now and then exhibited. We have given the best," he says,
"always taking care that decency shall not be outraged, nor delicacy
shocked; and in this respect, however improbable it may seem, precaution
has been by no means unnecessary." What a commentary on the sublime in
nature, as reflected on man in the mass!
These Table-Rock Albums contain some true poetry; much would-be fine
verse which falls below mediocre; much of horse-play or puerility; and
now and then a gleam of wit. Here first appeared the lines which I
remember to have conned years ago in a school-rhetoric, and for which, I
believe, N. P. Willis was responsible:
To view Niagara Falls one day,
A parson and a tailor took their way;
The parson cried, whilst wrapped in wonder,
And listening to the cataract's thunder,
"Lord! how thy works amaze our eyes,
And fill our hearts with vast surprise";--
The tailor merely made his note:
"Lord! what a place to sponge a coat!"
There has been many a visitor at Niagara Falls who shares the sentiments
of one disciple of the realistic school:
Loud roars the waters, O,
Loud roars the waters, O,
When I come to the Falls again
I hope they will not spatter so.
Another writes:
My thoughts are strange, sublime and deep,
As I look up to thee--
What a glorious place for washing sheep,
Niagara would be!
Examples of such doggerel could be multiplied by scores, but without
profit. There was sense if not poetry in the wight who wrote:
I have been to "Termination Rock"
Where many have been before;
But as I can't describe the scene
I wont say any more.
Infinitely better than this are the light but pleasing verses written in
a child's album, years ago, by the late Col. Peter A. Porter of Niagara
Falls. He pictured the discovery of the falls by La Salle and Hennepin
and ponders upon the changes that have followed:
What troops of tourists have encamped upon the river's brink;
What poets shed from countless quills Niagaras of ink;
What artist armies tried to fix the evanescent bow
Of the waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.
. . . . . . . . .
And stately inns feed scores of guests from well-replenished larder,
And hackmen drive their horses hard, but drive a bargain harder,
And screaming locomotives rush in anger to and fro;
But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago.
And brides of every age and clime frequent the islands' bower,
And gaze from off the stone-built perch--hence called the Bridal
Tower--
And many a lunar belle goes forth to meet a lunar beau,
By the waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.
Towards the close of the long poem the author takes a more serious tone,
but throughout he keeps up a happy cleverness, agreeably in contrast to
the prevailing high gush on one hand and balderdash on the other.
Among the writers of serious and sometimes creditable verse whose names
appear in the Table-Rock Albums were Henry D. O'Reilly, C. R. Rowland,
Sarah Pratt, Maria del Occidente, George Menzies, Henry Lindsay, the
Rev. John Dowling, J. S. Buckingham, the Hon. C. N. Vivian, Douglas
Stuart, A. S. Ridgely of Baltimore, H. W. Parker, and Josef Leopold
Stiger. Several of these names are not unknown in literature. Prof.
Buckingham is remembered as an earlier Bryce, whose elaborate
three-volume work on America is still of value. Vivian was a
distinguished traveler who wrote books; and Josef Leopold Stiger's
stanzas beginning
Sei mir gegruesst, des jungen Weltreichs Stolz und Zierde!
are by no means the worst of Niagara poems.
I cannot conceive of Niagara Falls as a scene promotive of humor, or
suggestive of wit. Others may see both in John G. Saxe's verses, of
which the first stanza will suffice to quote:
See Niagara's torrent pour over the height,
How rapid the stream! how majestic the flood
Rolls on, and descends in the strength of his might,
As a monstrous great frog leaps into the mud!
The "poem" contains six more stanzas of the same stamp.
The writing of jingles and doggerel having Niagara as a theme did not
cease when the Albums were no longer kept up. If there is no humor or
grotesqueness in Niagara, there is much of both in the human accessories
with which the spot is constantly supplied, and these will never cease
to stimulate the wits. I believe that a study of this field--not in a
restricted, but a general survey--would discover a decided improvement,
in taste if not in native wit, as compared with the compositions which
found favor half a century ago. Without entering that field, however, it
will suffice to submit in evidence one "poem" from a recent publication,
which shows that the making of these American _genre_ sketches, with
Niagara in the background, is not yet a lost art:
Before Niagara Falls they stood,
He raised aloft his head,
For he was in poetic mood,
And this is what he said:
"Oh, work sublime! Oh, wondrous law
That rules thy presence here!
How filled I am with boundless awe
To view thy waters clear!
"What myriad rainbow colors float
About thee like a veil,
And in what countless streams remote
Thy life has left its trail!"
"Yes, George," the maiden cried in haste,
"Such shades I've never seen,
I'm going to have my next new waist
The color of that green."
* * * * *
From about 1850 down to the present hour there is a striking dearth
of verse, worthy to be called poetry, with Niagara for its theme.
Newspapers and magazines would no doubt yield a store if they could be
gleaned; perchance the one Niagara pearl of poetry is thus overlooked;
but it is reasonably safe to assume that few really great poems sink
utterly from sight. There is, or was, a self-styled Bard of Niagara,
whose verses, printed at Montreal in 1872, need not detain us. The only
long work on the subject of real merit that I know of, which has
appeared in recent years, is George Houghton's "Niagara," published in
1882. Like Mr. Bulkley, he has a true poet's grasp of the material
aspect of his subject:
Formed when the oceans were fashioned, when all the world was
a workshop;
Loud roared the furnace fires and tall leapt the smoke from
volcanoes,
Scooped were round bowls for lakes and grooves for the sliding
of rivers,
Whilst with a cunning hand, the mountains were linked together.
Then through the day-dawn, lurid with cloud, and rent by forked
lightning,
Stricken by earthquake beneath, above by the rattle of thunder,
Sudden the clamor was pierced by a voice, deep-lunged and
portentous--
Thine, O Niagara, crying, "Now is creation completed!"
He sees in imagination the million sources of the streams in forest and
prairie, which ultimately pour their gathered "tribute of silver" from
the rich Western land into the lap of Niagara. He makes skillful use of
the Indian legendry associated with the river; he listens to Niagara's
"dolorous fugue," and resolves it into many contributory cries. In
exquisite fancy he listens to the incantation of the siren rapids:
Thus, in some midnight obscure, bent down by the storm of temptation
(So hath the wind, in the beechen wood, confided the story),
Pine trees, thrusting their way and trampling down one another,
Curious, lean and listen, replying in sobs and in whispers;
Till of the secret possessed, which brings sure blight to the hearer
(So hath the wind, in the beechen wood, confided the story),
Faltering, they stagger brinkward--clutch at the roots of the grasses,
Cry--a pitiful cry of remorse--and plunge down in the darkness.
The cataract in its varied aspects is considered with a thought for
those who
Sin, and with wine-cup deadened, scoff at the dread of hereafter,--
And, because all seems lost, besiege Death's door-way with gladness.
The master-stroke of the poem is in two lines:
That alone is august which is gazed upon by the noble,
That alone is gladsome which eyes full of gladness discover.
Herein lies the rebuking judgment upon Niagara's detractors, not all of
whom have perpetrated album rhymes.
Mr. Houghton, as the reader will note, recognizes the tragic aspect of
Niagara. Considering the insistence with which accident and suicide
attend, making here an unappeased altar to the weaknesses and woes of
mankind, this aspect of Niagara has been singularly neglected by the
poets. We have it, however, exquisitely expressed, in the best of all
recent Niagara verse--a sonnet entitled "At Niagara," by Richard Watson
Gilder.[86] The following lines illustrate our point:
There at the chasm's edge behold her lean
Trembling, as, 'neath the charm,
A wild bird lifts no wing to 'scape from harm;
Her very soul drawn to the glittering, green,
Smooth, lustrous, awful, lovely curve of peril;
While far below the bending sea of beryl
Thunder and tumult--whence a billowy spray
Enclouds the day.
. . . . . . . . .
* * * * *
There is a considerable amount of recent verse commonly called
"fugitive" that has Niagara for its theme, but I find little that calls
for special attention. A few Buffalo writers, the Rev. John C. Lord,
Judge Jesse Walker, David Gray, Jas. W. Ward, Henry Chandler, and the
Rev. Benjamin Copeland among them, have found inspiration in the lake
and river for some of the best lines that adorn the purely local
literature of the Niagara region. Indeed, I know of no allusion to
Niagara more exquisitely poetical than the lines in David Gray's
historical poem, "The Last of the Kah-Kwahs," in which he compares the
Indian villages sleeping in ever-threatened peace to
... the isle
That, locked in wild Niagara's fierce embrace,
Still wears a smile of summer on its face--
Love in the clasp of Madness.
With this beautiful imagery in mind, recall the lines of Byron:
On the verge
. . . . . . . . .
An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge
. . . . . . . . .
Resembling, 'mid the tortures of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.