Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1886-12-13
Wreck of the Evening Express.
DAVID HILL.

Wreck OF the Evening Express.
DAVID HILL.
You who remember that terrible night,
When the evening express shot out of sight,
Hurled down to its doom
Through the midnight gloom
Into the swollen river;
Can doubtless recall the shrieks of pain,
The roaring of waters, and wind, and rain,
The dashing of ice on the shore, as plain
And the same inward CULVER
As the hour you stood on the broken track
With your lanterns raised,
And frightfully gazed
Down into that chasm, yawning and black,
Out of which rose sounds that will haunt your ears,
you live to winter hundred years.
Here, was the railroad bridge ;and way down under,
The projecting rocks
That received the shocks
OF the ice, with sound like distant thunder.
Here was the massive abutment of stone,
Where the ice cakes damned,
And grated and jammed,
Till a crossing formed of ice alone;
And these were the banks, up which, like SNAIL
The mad water crept to the topmost rail,
And drilled through the crust of the frozen ground
And entered the gap with gurgling sound,
And quilted away
The gravel and clay
Till that pier stood out in dismantled array;
And on that pier, which the waters contended
Hung the bridge and track, like cloud suspended.
Nearly ten miles back,
On the railroad track
Fighting its way through the frightful gale,
Was the evening express.
No signal of distress
Was seen. There was not even the frail
And Pickering stream
Of a lanterns CLEAN
Swinging crosswise over the railroad bed
To point to the danger that lay ahead.
But over the floods and against the sleet
And the driving winds, and the rains that beat,
Rolled the seven long cars of human freight
Still snail
Over each rail-
Contentedly on to destruction straight;
And the engineer, firmly grasping the lever,
Felt safe, as he watched both the track, and the
weather.
Back here by the tottering covered bridge,
Where the ice stood piled like IA mountain ridge,
The mad waters swirled,
Ana eddied and whrled,
And seethed, like huge caldron boiling.
And down in that caldron which froth'd and rag'd,
And roared like a lion just caught and ENGAGED,
The ice cakes went dzzily coiling.
Around and around
With Kissing sound,
Dashed waters and ice, both forward and back
Until they madly plunged under the track,
Thro' the deep channel form'd then savagely tore
Down the rocky defle with cataract's roar;
But high overhead
From that rivers bed
Hung the trembling bridge like slender thread !;
And against the storm and the flood it battled,
Till the timber creaked, and the loose boards
ratified.
Only five miles back
On the railroad track,
Hurting defiance at the doomful storm,
Was the evening express still rolling along.
Though the headlight shone with sinister leer,
And the lamps cast shadows fantastic and queer,
That mockingly danced
On the banks, and pranced
In every conceivable figure and form.
In the cars could be heard both laughter and song,
The infant still smiled on its mothers knee,
And the maiden laughed in her joyous glee,
And the cards were play d and the couches spread
And the joke was cracked, and the papers ad,
Though, hid in the darkness, five miles ahead,
Was horrid tomb,
In which, in the gloom,
Some soon would be mangld and dying and dead
But over the tanarack tier the express
Rolled on with no signal, or sign of distress.
Back here was the bridge, half hid in cloud
Of darkness that hung
| Overhead and chung
To the earth beneath like sable shroud
Above it hung-Death.
His ruinous breath
Was the gale that shreked, and fiercely wreaket
His spite on the bridge till the timb ers creaked.
| His pulse the waters that throbbed below
In furious frenzy, to and fro;
And his voice the of the ice that tore,
Anu crashed on the banks of the frozen shore;
| But there he hung and blockaded the track,
Like hungry beast
| Already to feast
| From the train then approaching-one mile back !;
| And that train not seeing thing that wrong
| Kept rolling, and rolling, and rolling along.
| See! What means that misty glare
| Through the dank and dingy air?
IT'S the headlight of the approaching train.
On, on through the gloom,
| 1t rolls to its doom,
On, 'ganst the wind, on thro' the sleet and rain,
On the bridge, when,-crash!
Quick as the lightnng's flash,
The covered bridge, ,and track land passenger cars
And crashing beams, and boards, and boted iron
bars,
And grders, and flashing lights, land human live.
And columns of stone sway to and fro, then dive
J Down, down, down thro' the awful blackness of
night,
Down into that seething flood, and out of sight.
And to make the frightful ruin more complete,
| The pent up waters pour
Through the gap with roar,
And cover the wreckage like winding sheet.
But above it all, wild shrieks and human cries,
Out of that seething, swinging abyss arise.
To-day, where that train went plunglng below,
The wood bird sings, and the wild flowers grow
And over the rocks, meath the arching trees,I
The stream rolls along
With a wild, wierd song,
Thattenderly floats ON the summer breeze.
Overhead is the bridge, and train OF cars
Is just rolling along on the iron bars;
But, save for the few who silently mourn
For the friends who, that night, from their sides
torn,
No heart thrills with pain
Or thinks of the slain,
Or the train that wreck in the wind and raj
And no one torday feels thrill of fright,
As they that bridge on a stormy night.
|