University of Virginia Library

THE WRECK OF THE LINER.

Never has a more terrible and portentous ocean-disaster taken place, than the one a thousand miles east of New York, on the night of April 15. All classes of society were represented in this sea-slaughter; all grades of mentality were robbed away from the earth. I say this was portentous, for it indicated that no ship could for many years, if ever, be built large enough and strong enough to be surely safe from destruction from the ocean.

The night is a vision of splendor; the stars hang in clusters on high;
The oft-troubled ocean is resting and smiles at her sister, the sky.
The storms that have fought through the winter from battle's confusion are free;
And only the children of zephyrs are playing about on the sea.
What more could wild wastes of the waters throw into a sweet silent song,
To welcome the pilgrims of pleasure that traverse their regions along?
What less could they do in that starlight so strangely unclouded and bright,
To guard 'gainst the traps that are waiting to plunge a whole world into night?
Here glows on this sea's mottled surface a mammoth of beauty and grace:
This is not a ship, but a palace, that flits through the regions of space!
It carries in untold abundance all things that the fancy can please—
Few kings in this world ever journey surrounded with splendors like these.
No wish and no whim but is granted from only a gesture or word,
If also the yellow disc's rattle, or rustling of bank-notes be heard.
The rest-rooms are lavish and stately; the banquet-halls silver-and-white;
The couches that nourish the slumbers, are beautiful nests of delight.
And all of this grandeur seems saying, in words at the deep waters cast,
“Bow low to proud man, ancient Ocean!—your terrors are conquered at last!”
What names does this argosy carry:—the paltry?—the mean?—the unknown?
Or such as the world has already through many vast distances thrown?
It carries a true Peace Apostle, who fought his way up toward the sun,
And, scanning two worlds, conjured marvels in helping the uplift of one;
It carries a capital's idol—a boon to a President's sight—
Because he is not upon one day, but all days, a chivalrous knight;
It carries some makers of fortunes, some rulers of monies and marts,
Who keep their great riches in wide hands, and not in the depths of their hearts;
It carries the pure souls of women whom angels are watching tonight,
And who in the hour when earth darkens, will make even Heaven more bright:
It carries its fugitive hundreds, who in their own homes were oppressed,
But now grand air-castles are building, away in the glittering West;
It carries the day-by-day toiler, who all of his muscle must give,
For prosperous mortals' permission that he and his loved ones may live;
But all are to learn the great lesson—they long should have known, prudence deems—
That man cannot conquer the oceans, except in illusory dreams.
O ship-chiefs! the world has two oceans!—the one to your efforts gives way—
The other is frozen to mountains that trap you for many a day.
Just now watchful men through the ether flashed tidings of woe in your path:
Why rush at the half-hidden monsters, as if you were seeking their wrath?
Though you for the coining of money your own lives to venture are prone,
What right have you over these thousands who lent you the care of their own?
O ship-chiefs, your ways are mysterious: they give your long training the lie;
What mandate has told you to hasten, with murderous danger so nigh?
Have you not, when peril was frowning, or welcome security smiled,
Been taught the great axiom that caution and safety are parent and child?
The ship races on: its vast regions are flooded with billows of light;
Till, wearied with even the good cheer, some sojourners welcome the night,
While others still cling to their revels, and plunging in pleasure more deep,
Look forward as oft in the home life, for small hours to soothe them asleep.
But many a grave man has handed to darkness the care of his cares,
And many a child has seen Heaven through clear unstained windows of prayers,
And many a woman o'er-wearied, the sojourn of Morpheus has blessed,
So she to the dictums of fashion can fling some defiance, and rest;
But all look ahead to one morning when, nearing the spires and the domes,
They leave with new feelings of freedom, this grand floating home, for their homes.
What craft looms upon the horizon, with chilling and ominous breath?
It sailed from white deserts of North Land—it carries a cargo of death.
It needs not of chart or of compass: it wrecks not of grief or of pain;
It spares not the dead or the living—it counts not the lists of its slain.
O watchman be keen to your duty! These moments are treasures untold!
For time at a stress has a value not reckoned in silver or gold.
O man you have thrown a defiance at all that destruction can do,
Your brothers and sisters are praying the boasts of your prowess be true!
O tranquil but pitiless ocean! your cruelest storm-clouds are nought
To this starlit evening that flashes on ice-mantled graves dearly bought!
This fair night will hear moans of anguish that soon must encompass the world:
Not tossed, this vast home on the waters, 'gainst billows tumultuously hurled,
But steadily cov'ring the false hopes of frighted humanity o'er,
The ship from its flight o'er the billows must fall to the sea's solemn floor.
Nought, nought but the heart can e'r picture the agonies known and unknown,
That throng through the night's desolation, with horrors unspeakable strown:
The wrenching from halls of the banquet, to roofs of the desolate wave;
The wearisome watching for rescue, to come from the far-distant brave;
The crushing of new-made devices that serve not to save, but to kill,
The life-boats that turn into death-boats, for lacking of seamanship skill;
The hurried and agonized partings that come with this terrible doom,
And shroud the sweet love of a lifetime by changing the sea to a tomb;
The cry of the child for its parent, the wife's and the husband's vain call,
The prayers of the righteous invoking the aid of the Father of all;
The fragile flotillas with women too brave their own sorrow to tell,
Like slaves at the galley-oars toiling, still hoping that all will be well;
The grief of the half-thousand toilers who, prisoned with clinging bolts nigh,
Have nought they can do for escaping except in that prison to die;
The tremulous strains of musicians, who, just from the pleasure-hall's glare,
Creep “Nearer to God”, when around them are dancing the ghosts of despair;
The cries of the maimed and the dying, who languish o'er death-beds of waves,
On ruins of yesterday's splendor that soon are to dig them their graves;
O great God! You saw all this anguish,
You deemed it was best to be so:
But all for the best is intended: You know what we never can know.