---
title: Times and Seasons
description: Issues of 1842 to 1843.
authors:
  - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
editors:
  - Ebenezer Robinson
  - Don Carlos Smith
  - Smith, Joseph, Jr.
  - Taylor, John
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - newspaper
  - times-and-seasons
  - nauvoo
  - nineteenth-century
periodical: Times and Seasons
volume: 4
number: 13
published: 1843-05-15
publisher: E. Robinson and D. C. Smith; later John Taylor
publisher_place: Commerce and Nauvoo, Illinois
language: en
type: article
reference: "“The Whirlwind,” *Times and Seasons* 4, no. 13 (May 15, 1843): 208."
printed_title: The Whirlwind.
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-05-15_4_13
  transcription: Text from the Centerplace.org transcription (https://www.centerplace.org/history/ts/v4n13.htm), with its page breaks; this Internet Archive scan is the reference copy (its OCR was used only as a witness for OCR repair)
  identifier: per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-05-15_4_13
start_page: 208
end_page: 208
curator_note: A Mormon newspaper published by the church in Nauvoo; included for historical study. Inclusion does not imply endorsement.
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1843 (Nauvoo, Illinois); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States
  source: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-05-15_4_13
  publication_year: 1843
---

# The Whirlwind

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By S. A. Prior.

There was a furious whirlwind felt in the town of Newbury, Schuyler county Illinois, on the 21st of April 1843, which tore up the trees by the roots, blew down several houses, and killed some cattle.

Deep sable curtains vail [veil] the sky, The yielding thickets groan and bend,

Dead stillness reigns in air, Their boughs are toss'd and twirl'd;

A dreadful gloom shrowds [shrouds] all on high, The wind, the sturdy oaks do rend,

And rides triumphant there. Which to the earth are hurl'd.

The winds are hushed, and silent rest, The winds now hurry on amain,

Nature has sunk to sleep, The house its cover yields;

The zephyr breathes not o er the breast Dire desolation strews the plain,

Of the unconscious deep. And fragments strew the fields.

The leaf scarce trembles in the grove, The bleeding cattle groan and die

Nor flag on yonder tower; Beneath this awful stroke;

And looing [lowing] stands the loving drove, Their horrid, mangled bodies lie

Aw'd by the threat'ning hour. Beneath the prostrate oak.

Yet still mid natures' calm profound, The winds have spent their awful force,

Which darkness fain would keep, Their dreadful conquest won;

We hear a burst of awful sound And devastation marks their course,

Fall on creations sleep. And now their work is done.

Now hurled amid the darken'd air, A house or two by it destroyed-

The whirlwind in the sky The men with terror filled;

Plunges the lofty trees afar, And many animals annoyed,

In grandeur borne [born] on high. And two or three were killed.

The Times and Seasons, is edited by John Taylor.

Printed and published about the first and fifteenth of every month, on the corner of Water and Ban Streets, Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois.