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Resurgo San Francisco

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 19, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 15.

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Resurgo San Francisco

By Joaquin Miller

By Joaquin Miller, in the Circle

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, 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, to unknown laws! You robbed her, robbed her without shame; Aye, 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!
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 horde 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— 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 dare and sing your blazing 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 shall 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 black despair! Spare me this red-black, surging sea Of leaping, choking agony.
It breaks the chain! up right, left up! It tops the blackness, dome and spire; It drinks the rich man's rosy cup— It leaps, it laughs, a sea of fire! And now o'er all a breathless pall— Then flames leap laughing at the sun— And now they choke, then choking fall! What, Rome? Rome never dreamed such night, Or Janus days or days undone As this wild, drunken, crazed delight Of red flames and that royal horde— This revel at the rich man's board.
And say you God saw not, cared not? Nay, better say there is no God, Or that He slept, or quite forgot The lowly ways the heathen trod, What time he begged to toil for bread, With hollow cheek or bended head. Nay, better, braver, wiser, say The patient Christ will bear alway The wrongs the outraged peon bore What time you robbed him, ranch and store; Say that your lies on clean, brown men Were but a jest; then lie again!
I call one witness, only one, In proof that God is God, and just: Yon high-heaved dome, debris and dust, 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— Yon huge high Hall, the most accurst!
And rests your rich man without blame? Were his ears dulled, were his eyes sealed? And shall your good man bear no shame? Is his heart stone? Is his sense steeled? He said, "Go to! What need I fear? Am I my brother's keeper here?" He knew this piteous penal crew, He knew its deeds, its darkness knew; He knew the right, loved right afore— But loved his yellow metal more! And so the seven-headed beast, And lo, the last Belshazzar's feast.