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Henry Ward Beecher
The Burning of Chicago.
FOUND a Rome of common clay," imperial Cæsar cried; "Can anybody be happier?" said the father-bird to the mother-bird. "We will live in this tree always; for there is no sorrow here. It is a tree that always bears joy." 66 The very next day one of the birds dropped out of the nest, and a cat ate it up in a minute, and only four remained; and the parent-birds were very sad, and there was no song all that day, nor the next. Soon The ages wrote their autographs along the sculptured "I left a Rome of marble!" No other Rome beside ! the little birds were big enough to fly; and great was stonetheir parents' joy to see them leave the nest, and sit The golden eagles flew abroad-Augustan splendors crumpled up upon the branches. There was then a shonegreat time. One would have thought the two old They made a Roman of the world! They trailed the birds were two French dancing-masters, talking and classic robe, chattering, and scolding the little birds to make them And flung the Latin toga around the naked globe! "I found Chicago wood and clay," a mightier Kaiser As in the days of burning Troy, when Virgil's hero said, fled, Then flung upon the sleeping mart his royal robes of So gray and trembling pilgrims found some younger red, And temple, dome, and colonnade, and monument That bore them through the wilderness with bold feet instead, and spire elastic stride, Put on the crimson livery of dreadful Kaiser Fire!
The stately piles of polished stone were shattered into sand, And Ruth and Rachel, pale and brave, in silence walked beside ; Those Bible girls of Judah's day did make that day And madly drove the dread simoon, and snowed them on the land; sublime- And rained them till the sea was red, and scorched the wings of prayer !
Like thistle-down ten thousand homes went drifting Leave life but them, no other loss can ever bankrupt Time!
Men stood and saw their all caught up in chariots of through the air, flame- And dumb Dismay walked hand-in-hand with frozeneyed Despair ! No mantle falling from the sky they ever thought to claim, Chicago vanished in a cloud--the towers were storms of sleet, and smiled, Lo! ruins of a thousand years along the spectral street! The night burned out between the days! The ashen hoar-frost fell, stranger's child !
And empty-handed as the dead, they turned away And bore a stranger's household gods and saved a What valor brightened into shape, like statues in a hall, As if some demon set ajar the bolted gates of hell, And let the molten billows break the adamantine bars, And roll the smoke of torment up to smother out the stars!
When on their dusky panoply the blazing torches fall, Stood bravely out, and saw the world spread wings of fiery flight, The low, dull growl of powder-blasts just dotted off the din, And not a trinket of a star to crown disastered night!