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: