Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier Part 14

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 a.n.a.lysis 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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.s, 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 a.s.sertively 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 G.o.d 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 wors.h.i.+pper, 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 att.i.tude 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 Parna.s.sian att.i.tudinizing 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 ent.i.tled 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sages 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.ble in its diction. Only a true poet takes such cognizance of initial impulses and relations in nature as this:

In thy hoa.r.s.e 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 ent.i.tled "Niagara," by "A Member of the Ohio Bar," of whose ident.i.ty 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 G.o.d!

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 alb.u.ms at the Table Rock and other points at the falls, for the record of "impressions." Needless to say, these alb.u.ms 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 alb.u.ms, issued in 1856, lamented that "the innumerable host of visitors who have perpetrated composition in the volumes of ma.n.u.script 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 const.i.tutes 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 ma.s.s!

These Table-Rock Alb.u.ms 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 alb.u.m, 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 Alb.u.ms 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 gegrusst, des jungen Weltreichs Stolz und Zierde!