Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier Part 15

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 Alb.u.ms 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 a.s.sume 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 fas.h.i.+oned, 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 a.s.sociated 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 gra.s.ses, 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 n.o.ble, 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 alb.u.m 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 ent.i.tled "At Niagara," by Richard Watson Gilder.[86] The following lines ill.u.s.trate 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, l.u.s.trous, 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.

Byron did not write of Niagara, but these stanzas beginning

The roar of waters ...

often have been applied to our cataract. Mr. Gray may or may not have been familiar with them. In any event he improved on the earlier poet's figure.

Merely as a matter of chronicle, it is well to record here the names of several writers, some of them of considerable reputation, who have contributed to the poetry of Niagara. Alfred B. Street's well-known narrative poem, "Frontenac," contains Niagara pa.s.sages. So does Levi Bishop's metrical volume "Teuchsa Grondie" ("Whip-poor-will"), the Niagara portion dedicated to the Hon. Augustus S. Porter. Ever since Chateaubriand wrote "Atala," authors have been prompted to a.s.sociate Indian legends with Niagara, but none has done this more happily than William Trumbull, whose poem, "The Legend of the White Canoe,"

ill.u.s.trated by F. V. Du Mond, is one of the most artistic works in all the literature of Niagara.

The Rev. William Ellery Channing, the Rev. Joseph H. Clinch, the Rev.

Joseph Cook, Christopher P. Cranch, Oliver I. Taylor, Grenville Mellen, Prof. Moffat, John Savage, Augustus N. Lowry, Claude James Baxley of Virginia, Abraham Coles, M. D., Henry Howard Brownell, the Rev. Roswell Park, Willis g.a.y.l.o.r.d Clark, Mary J. Wines, M. E. Wood, E. H. Dewart, G.

W. Cutter, J. N. McJilton, and the Chicago writer, Harriet Monroe, are, most of them, minor poets (some, perhaps, but poets by courtesy), whose tributes to our cataract are contained in their collected volumes of verse. In E. G. Holland's "Niagara and Other Poems" (1861), is a poem on Niagara thirty-one pages long, with several pages of notes, "composed for the most part by the Drachenfels, one of the Seven Mountains of the Rhine, in the vicinity of Bonn, September, 1856, and delivered as a part of an address on American Scenery the day following." Among the Canadian poets who have attempted the theme, besides several already named, may be recorded John Breakenridge, a volume of whose verse was printed at Kingston in 1846; Charles Sangster, James Breckenridge, John Imrie, and William Rice, the last three of Toronto. The French-Canadian poet, Louis Frechette, has written an excellent poem, "Le Niagara." Wm. Sharpe, M.

D., "of Ireland," wrote at length in verse on "Niagara and Nature Wors.h.i.+p." Charles Pelham Mulvaney touches the region in his poem, "South Africa Remembered at Niagara." One of the most striking effusions on the subject comes from the successful Australian writer, Douglas Sladen. It is ent.i.tled "To the American Fall at Niagara," and is dated "Niagara, Oct. 18, 1899":

Niagara, national emblem! Cataract Born of the maddened rapids, sweeping down Direct, resistless from the abyss's crown Into the deep, fierce pool with vast impact Scarce broken by the giant boulders, stacked To meet thine onslaught, threatening to drown Each tillaged plain, each level-loving town 'Twixt thee and ocean. Lo! the type exact!

America Niagarized the world.

Europe, a hundred years agone, beheld An avalanche, like pent-up Erie, hurled Through barriers, to which the rocks of eld Seemed toy things--leaping into G.o.dlike s.p.a.ce A sign and wonder to the human race.[87]

Friedrich Bodenstedt and Wilhelm Meister of Germany, J. B. Scandella and the Rev. Santo Santelli of Italy ("Cascada di Niagara," 1841), have place among our Niagara poets. So, conspicuously, has Juan Antonio Perez Bonalde, whose ill.u.s.trated volume, "El Poema del Niagara,"

dedicated to Emilio Castelar, with a prose introduction of twenty-five pages by the Cuban martyr Jose Marti, was published in New York, reaching at least a second edition, in 1883. Several Mexican poets have addressed themselves to Niagara. "a la Catarata del Niagara" is a sonnet by Don Manuel Carpio, whose collected works have been issued at Vera Cruz, Paris, and perhaps elsewhere. In the dramatic works of Don Vincente Riva Palacio and Don Juan A. Mateos is found "La Catarata del Niagara," a three-act drama in verse; the first two acts occur in Mexico, in the house of _Dona Rosa_, the third act is at Niagara Falls, the time being 1847.[88] The Spanish poet Antonio Vinageras, nearly fifty years ago, wrote a long ode on Niagara, dedicating it to "la celebre poetisa, Dona Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda." In no language is there a n.o.bler poem on Niagara than the familiar work by Maria Jose Heredosia, translated from the Spanish by William Cullen Bryant. The Comte de Fleury, who visited Niagara a few years ago, left a somewhat poetical souvenir in French verse. Fredrika Bremer, whose prose is often unmetered poetry even after translation, wrote of Niagara in a brief poem. The following is a close paraphrase of the Swedish original:

Niagara is the betrothal of Earth's life With the Heavenly life.

That has Niagara told me to-day.

And now can I leave Niagara. She has Told me her word of primeval being.

Another Scandinavian poet, John Nyborn, has written a meritorious poem on Niagara Falls, an adaptation of which, in English, was published some years since by Dr. Albin Bernays.

It is a striking fact that Niagara's stimulus to the poetic mind has been quite as often through the ear as through the eye. The best pa.s.sages of the best poems are prompted by the sound of the falling waters, rather than by the expanse of the flood, the height of cliffs, or the play of light. In Mr. Bulkley's work, which indeed exhausts the whole store of simile and comparison, we perpetually hear the voice of the falls, the myriad voices of nature, the awful voice of G.o.d.

"Minstrel of the Floods,"

he cries:

What paeans full of triumph dost thou hymn!

However varied is the rhythm sweet Of thine unceasing song! The ripple oft Astray along thy banks a lyric is Of love; the cool drops trickling down thy sides Are gentle sonnets; and thy lesser falls Are strains elegiac, that sadly sound A monody of grief; thy whirlpool fierce, A shrill-toned battle-song; thy river's rush A strain heroic with its couplet rhymes; . . . . . . . . .

While the full sweep of thy close-crowded tide Resounds supreme o'er all, an epic grand.

Of this cla.s.s, too, is the "Apostrophe to Niagara," by one B. Frank Palmer, in 1855. It is said to have been "written with the pencil in a few minutes, the author seated on the bank, drenched, from the mighty bath at Termination Rock, and still listening to the roar and feeling the eternal jar of the cataract." The Rev. T. Starr King, upon reading it in 1855, said: "The apostrophe has the music of Niagara in it." As a typical example of the devotional apostrophe it is perhaps well to give it in full: