Niagara Falls 



1804 Then, aloft through freezing air, 



With the snow-bird soft and fair 

 As the fleece that heaven flings 

 O'er his little pearly wings, 

 Light above the rocks I play, 

 Where Niagara's starry spray, 

 Frozen on the cliff, appears 

 Like a giant's starting tears. 

 There, amid the island-sedge, 

 Just upon the cataract's edge, 

 Where the foot of living man 

 Never trod since time began, 

 Lone I sit, at close of day, 

 While, beneath the golden ray, 

 Icy columns gleam below, 

 Feathered round with falling snow, 

 And an arch of glory springs, 

 Sparkling as the chain of rings 

 Round the neck of virgins hung, — 

 Virgins, who have wandered young 

 O'er the waters of the west 

 To the land where spirits rest! 



1804 WlLSON, ALEXANDER. The foresters: a poem, descriptive of a 



Wilson pedestrian journey to the Falls of Niagara, in the autumn of 1 804, by the 



author of the American ornithology. Pub. by Samuel Tomlinson, Bucks 

 County, Pa., Phila.: John Boyle. 1853. Pp. 71-78. 



A narrative poem describing a journey from the banks of the Schuylkill, 

 through Pennsylvania and New York to Niagara Falls, published in the 

 Portfolio of Philadelphia in 1 809 and 1810. The pages indicated are 

 a description of the sound, vapor and of the Falls themselves from above, 

 below and behind. The following lines show that Wilson's fame rests 

 more securely on an ornithological rather than on a poetical basis. 



Heavy and slow, increasing on the ear, 



Deep through the woods a rising storm we hear, 



Th' approaching gust still loud and louder grows, 



\ ' 698 



