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 gegrüsst, 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!