San Francisco

San Francisco
102

She sits upon her seven hills,
All bare and blackened now,
A mourning vell of sable smoke
Obscures her stricken brow
She weeps above her dead that lie
Uncounted in the gloom
With ashes for a winding-sheet
And cinders for a tomb

Where rows of charred and crumbling walls
Stand roofless to the sky,
For bread and water ceaselessly
Her homeless thousands cry:
With earthquake shocks that rent the rock
In fissures gaping wide,
And fire and famine, too, behold
A city crucified!

There’s crape upon the Golden Gate
And sorrow in the land,
And all the nations of the earth
Extend a helping hand;
From East and West and North and
South,
The long relief-trains go
For every heart in every breast
Is melted by her woe

But from the ruins at her feet,
Lo she will rise again;
The spirit bold of Forty-nine
Still burns in heart and brain
A San Franciscq newly built
And grander than before
Will crown with palaces of trade
Her seven hills once more
-Minna Irving