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.