Page 124 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...
P. 124
THE BURNING OF CHICAGO.
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I FO U XD a Rome of common clay/1 imperial C^sar cried;
“ I left a Romo of marble! "
No other Rome beside !
The ages wrote their autographs along the sculptured stone—
The golden eagles flew aboad— Anj.-n.sUm splendors shone—
They made a Roman of the world ! They trailed the classic robe,
And flung the Latin toga around the naked globe!
’T found Chicago wood and e'ay,7' a mightier Kaiser said,
Then flung upon the sleeping mart his royal robes of red,
And temple, dome, and colonnade, and monument and spire
Put on the crimson livery of dreadful Kaiser Fire?
The stately piles of poksbed stoLie were shattered into sand,
And madly drove the dread simoon, and snowed them on the land;
And rained them till the sea was red, and scorched the wings of prayer!
Like thistle-down ten thousand homes went drifting through the air,
And dumb Dismay walked haud-mdiand with frozen eyed Despair!
Chicago vanished in a clood— the towers were storms of sleet,
Lo ! ruins of a thousand years along the spectral street!
The night burned out between the days! The a .shell hoar-frost fell,
As if some demon set ajar the bo [ted gates of hell,
And let the rnolton billows break the adamantine bars,
And roll the smoke of torment i.:p to smother out the stars !
The low, did! growl of powder-blasts just dotted off the din,
■As if they tolled for perished clocks the if me that might have been !
The thunder of the fiery surf roared human accents dumb;
The trurnpc-t's clangor died away, a wild bee's drowsy hum,
And breakers beat the empty world that rumbled like a drum,
O cities of the Silent Land! O Grace land and Roschill !
No tombs without their tenantry? The pale host sleeping stilt ?
Y o u r marble thresholds daw ning red with holoeaustal glare,
As if the Waking Angel's fdoL were set upon the stair!
