free-verse44 lines
The Burning Of Chicago.
by Kate Seymour MacleanOut of the west a voice--a shudder of horror and pity;
Quivers along the pulses of all the winds that blow;--
Woe for the fallen queen, for the proud and beautiful city.
Out of the North a cry--lamentation and mourning and woe.
Dust and ashes and darkness her splendour and brightness cover,
Like clouds above the glory of purple mountain peaks;
She sits with her proud head bowed, and a mantle of blackness over--
She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks.
The city of gardens and palaces, stately and tall pavilions,
Roofs flashing back the sunlight, music and gladness and mirth,
Whose streets were full of the hum and roar of the toiling millions,
Whose merchantmen were princes, and the honourable of the earth:
Whose traders came from the islands--from far off summer places,
Bringing spices and pearls, and the furs and skins of beasts.
Men from the frozen North, and men with fierce dark faces,
Full of the desert fire, and the untamed life of the East.
Treasures of gems and gold, of statues and flowers and fountains,
Vases of onyx and jasper from Indian emperors sent;
Pictures out of the heart of tropical sunlit mountains,
Of rocks of porphyry piled at the gates of the Occident.
Dusk-brown sons of the forest, hunters of deer and of bison,
And the almond-eyed child of the sun met in her busy streets,
With waifs from the banks of the Indus, and the ancient river Pison--
Lands of the date and the palm, and the citron's hoarded sweets.
The surging tide of the prairie rolled its billows of blossom
Against her mighty walls, and beat at her hundred gates;
The riches of all the world were poured into her bosom,
Kings were her mighty men, and lords, and potentates.
She sat in her place by the sea, and the swift-sailing ships obeyed her.
Full freighted with corn and wheat their purple sails unfurled,
Far-off in the morning land, and the isles beyond the equator;
Out of her heaped-up garners she scattered the bread of the world.
As her pride and her beauty were perfect, so desolation and mourning,
Swift and sudden, and sure her utter destruction came,
The heavens above were dark with the smoke of her awful burning,
And the earth and the sea were lighted with the fierceness of her flame.
Behold oh, England! oh, Europe! and see is there any sorrow
Like hers who sits in silence among her children slain,
Oh, blackness of woe and ruin! can any future morrow
Bring back to the shrouded city her glory and crown again!
Aye, subtle and wonderful links of human love and pity,
Ye have bridged the sea of ruin, and spanned it with a span!
She shall rise again from her ashes and build a fairer city,
With a larger faith in God, and the Brotherhood of Man,