Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/177

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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, hallooing down the street:

"Niagara, Niagara."

The journalists are sick of ink:

Boy prodigals are lost in wine,

By night where white and red lights blink,

The eyes of Death, in Buffalo.

And only twenty miles away

Are starlit rocks and healing spray:—

Niagara, 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 to-day

Awake, three thousand miles away,

An echo of Niagara,

The cataract Niagara. Vachel Lindsay