Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Niagara

Vachel Lindsay

WITHIN the town of Buffalo

Are prosy men with leaden eyes.

Like ants they worry to and fro,

(Important men in Buffalo!)

But only twenty miles away

A deathless glory is at play—

Niagara, Niagara.

The women buy their lace and cry,

“Oh, such a delicate design!”

And over ostrich feathers sigh,

By counters there in Buffalo.

The children haunt the trinket shops;

They buy false-faces, bells and tops—

Forgetting great Niagara.

Within the town of Buffalo

Are stores with garnets, sapphires, pearls,

Rubies, emeralds aglow,

Opal chains in Buffalo—

Cherished symbols of success.

They value not your rainbow dress,

Niagara, Niagara.

The shaggy meaning of her name—

This Buffalo, this recreant town—

Sharps and lawyers prune and tame.

Few pioneers in Buffalo,

Except young lovers flushed and fleet;

And winds halooing down the street,

“Niagara, Niagara.”

The journalists are sick of ink,

Boy-prodigals burnt out with wine

By night where white and red lights blink—

The eyes of Death, in Buffalo.

And only twenty miles away

Are starlight rocks and healing spray—

Niagara, Niagara.

By the quaint market proudly loom

Church walls. Kind altars gleam within,

Confession boxes crowd the gloom,

Baptismal fonts, in Buffalo.

St. Michael fights the dragon drear;

The stations of the cross are here.

But my church is Niagara.

Above the town a tiny bird,

A shining speck at sleepy dawn,

Forgets the ant-hill so absurd—

This self-important Buffalo.

Descending twenty miles away

He bathes his wings at break of day—

Niagara! Niagara!

What marching men of Buffalo

Flood the streets in rash crusade?

Fools-to-free-the-world, they go,

Primeval hearts from Buffalo.

Red cataracts of France today

Awake, three thousand miles away,

An echo of Niagara,

The cataract Niagara!