The Oxford intelligencer. (Oxford, Miss.) 1860-18??, 1860-10-03
From Harper's Weekly.
On Board The Steamer.

On Board The steamer.
SEPTEMBER winds are soft and warm,
September nights are clear:
The weird moon flies in haste to greet
The autumn Of the year.
Her beams are wrestling with the waves
On Michigan's broad lake
They struggle, feint and fall away
In many a silver fake.
Our steamer gay with waving flags,
And banners rich and rare,
Swept proudly from Chicagos wharves
While music rent the air.
Out to the lake, with mrth and song,
Went twenty score OF souls
Along the line of laughing waves
The joyial monster rolls -.....
The moonlight fell in shimmering streams
About our steamers deck,
And glanced on many nodding plume,
And many a snow-white neck.
Quick feet were moving in the dance
To music's livelicst strain,
While whispering lovers breathed their tales
OF old loves DER again.
Twas long beyond the midnight hour,
And white sails fitted by;
While still the music, laugh, and song
Went ringing to the skyi
Till one white ghost-like, hurrying craft
Swept on with wind and tide,
Crashed, reckless Of our warming through
The gallant steamers side.
I've read in some old fairy tale
OF cities vast and lone,
Where every living, moving thing
Turned suddenly to stone.
And so, that instant with the crash,
All life seemed hushed in death,
And stony forms stood staring pale
With terror-bated breath.
The heavy surging Of the sea,
The rushing Of the steam,
Was heard instead Of groan or prayer
OF shriekng or of scream;
And then, as though the silence walked
The stony-footed crowd
Our decks were wild with pallid forms,
That wept and sobbed aloud.
o God IL was a fearful time
Short time for thought or prayer
When twenty score of dcathly cries
Rang out upon the air. leyesr
North east, south, west they strained then
Along the moonlit waves;
Then, hopeless knclt in stolid fear
Above their waiting graves.
Then how they clung in shivering groups,
As pitched our steamer through
The deep trough Of the silent sea,
So deep and dark and blue
Then how they held their shrieking breaths
With every moaning roll,
And each poor, shrinking stricken wretch,
Poured out his inmost soul!
would not for the wealth of worlds
See such sight again.
Lest all the horror of that night
Should burn into my brain.
To stand, with neither land TOR sail
Within my straining eye,
And see some twenty score in life
preparing tnem 10 ule
So soon the minutes fed away
They seconds seemed to be,
Before our ship and living freight
Went down beneath the sea.
Down, down. full forty fathom deep,
With prayer upon my tongue,
Ny hope shred Of splintered spar,
To which madly clung.
The next Iknew the moon sbone down
Upon shipless sea
Where scores and scores Of drowning men
Called hopelessly to me
The wind blew fresh toward the shore,
And curled the silver wave;
The wind that waited me to life
Tapped many deeP-sea grave.
/ stood alone upon the beach,
As broke the mornings gray,
And watched with frozen heart the specks
That ioated far away;
And while prayed for those afar,
Beneath Gods awful frown,
prayed thatI should never see
Another ship go down.
ALAwTER at White Sulphur Springs. Va
who had been on a spree, drank two bottles
r ..I.---o 81 dioI