Joaquin Miller's Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

This tall, strong City stands today
The fairest, comeliest fashionings
Of marble, granite, concrete, clay
That ever fell from human hand;
That ever flourished sea or land,
Or wooed the sea-world's wide white-wings.
This concrete City stands today,
The newest, truest, man has wrought;
The kindest, cleanest, strongest, yea
Twice strongest City, deed or thought,
Thrice strongest ever lost or won—
Thrice strongest wall, without, within
That is or ever yet has been
Beneath the broad path of the Sun.

Behold her Seven Hills loom white
Once more as marble-builded Rome.
Her marts teem with a touch of home
And music fills her halls at night;
Her streets flow populous, and light
Floods every happy, hopeful face;
The wheel of fortune whirls apace
And old-time fare and dare hold sway.
Farewell the blackened, toppling wall,
The bent steel gird, the somber pall—
Farewell forever, let us pray;
Farewell forever and a day!

How beauteous her lifted brow!
How heartfelt her harmonious song!
How strong her heart, how more than strong
She stands rewrought, refashioned now!
Her concrete bastions, knit with steel,

206

Sing symphonies in stately forms,
Make harmonies that mock at storms,
Make music that you can but feel.
And yet, and yet what ropes of sand,
What wisps of straw in God's right hand—
And yet, my risen city, yet
Your prophets must not now forget:

Must not forget how you laid hold
This whole west world as all your own—
How sat this sea-bank as a throne,
How strewed these very streets with gold,
How laid hard tribute, land and sea,
Heaped silver, gold incessantly!
The simple Mexicans' broad lands
You coveted, thrust forth both hands,
Then bade Ramona plead her cause
In unknown language, unknown laws!
You robbed her, robbed her without shame:
Ay, even of her virtuous name!

Nor shall your prophets now forget,
Now that you stand sublimely strong,
How when these vast estates were set
With granaries that burst in song,
You spurned the heathen at your feet
Because he begged to toil to eat;
Because he plead with bended head
For work, for work and barely bread.
Yea, how you laughed his lack of pride,
And lied and laughed, and laughed and lied
And mocked him, in your pride and hate,
Then in his gaunt face banged your Gate!

207

Nay, not forget, now that you rise
Triumphant, strong as Abram's song,
How that you lied the lie of lies
And wrought the Nipponese such wrong,
Then sent your convict chief to plead
The President expel them hence.
Ah me, what black, rank insolence!
What rank, black infamy indeed!
Because their ways, their hands were clean,
You feared the difference between,
Feared they might surely be preferred
Above your howling, convict herd!

Their sober, sane life put to shame
Your noisome, drunken penal band
That howled in Labor's sacred name,
Nor wrought, nor even lifted hand,
Save but to stone and mock and moil
Their betters who but asked to toil.
Yon harvest-fields cried out as when
Your country cries for fighting men,
And yet your hordes, by force and fraud,
Forbade this first, last law of God!
And you? You sat supinely by
And gathered gold, nor reckoned why!

Your great, proud men heaped gold on gold;
They heaped deep cellars with such hoard
Of costliest wines, rich, rare, and old
As never Thebes or Babel stored—
They sat at wine till ghostly dawn. ...

The ides had come but had not gone;
For lo! the writing on the wall
And then the surge, the topple, fall—

208

Then dust, then darkness, then such light
As never yet lit day or night,
And there was neither night nor day,
For night and day were burned away!

Hear me once more, my city, heed!
I may not kiss again your tears
Nor point your drunken, grasping greed,
For I am stricken well with years,
But do ye as you erst have done,
Despise His daughter, mock His son—
If still the sow her wallow keeps
And wine runs as a rivulet,
My harp hangs where the willow weeps.
Nay, nay, I must not now forget
The sin, the shame, the feast, the fall,
The red handwriting on the wall.

Then let me not behold once more
Your flowing cellars, mile on mile,
A sea of flame without a shore
Or even one lone, lifted isle.
Let me not hear it, feel it choke,
A wild beast choking in his chain
The while he tugs and leaps in vain
And drinks his death of flaming smoke.
Spare me this nightmare, pray you spare
This black three days of blank despair!
Spare me this red-black, surging sea
Of leaping, choking agony.

I call one witness, only one,
In proof that God is God, and just:
Yon high-heaved dome, débris and dust.

209

With torn lips lifted to the sun,
In desolation still, lords all—
The rent and ruined City Hall.
And here throbbed San Francisco's heart,
And here her madness held high mart—
Sold justice, sold black shame, sold hell.
And here, right here, God's high hand fell,
Fell hardest, hottest, first, and worst—
Your huge high Hall, the most accurst!

Therefore I say tempt not the fates.
Love meekness more, love folly less.
The stranger housed within thy gates
Hold sacred in his lowlyness.
That pride which runs before a fall—
Behold God's Angels fell from pride!
And He, the lowly crucified?
Ye would have stoned Him, one and all.
Beware the pride of race, beware
The pride of creed, long pompous prayer—
Who made your High Priest higher than
The humblest, honest Chinaman?