The Hirschman Clock

The Hirschman Clock
64

April eighteenth at five o’clock
The Hirschman clock was ticking:
It watched the Kearny-Market block
And kept the minutes clicking
Alas! when thirteen told that clook
There came a mighty earthquake shock
Oh! woe to thee, fair Frisco!

Embower’d in her greeny mase
The jewel’d town was sleeping
When forth there shot & fourfold blaze,
Encircling, creeping, leaping-
In crash’d the stores, the pipes wrench’d dry-
No sadder sight can eye descry
Then stood it ill for Frisco,

The hungry more, the more they fed
The roaring names kept eating;
Despairing as they hillward fied
Were old and young retreating;
Till skill and water at Van Ness
At last subdued the dire distress,
And hope returned to Frisco

But calmly still through yawn and flash
The Hirschman clock was standing,
A piiler ‘midst the smash and crash,
In fire-swept seas a-landing;
It ticked as if it was to say:
“This town may swerve, but it will stay
Chief of the West, fair Frisco”

It chronigled those awful hours
When block on block the fire devours,
Spreading to heaven glaring hands
And throwing broadcast seething brands;
Yet on it stood, that guardian clock,
Watching the city’s elite block,
The Hirschman clock was standing

It stood the quake, it stood the shake;
It stood the fire-fiend’s hellish rake,
And now that trolleys spark again
And axe, and hammer sound amain,
It ticks a merry, joyful lay:
This town may swerve, but it will stay
Chief of the West, Francisco!

Now mighty city by the Gate,
Proud forepost of the Banner State,
That clock is index to thy fate,
It will to glowing deed elate:
Stand firm and show thy peerless pluck,
Unmatched alike in stress or luck,
Then chasten’d rises thy renown,
Of the Pacfic head and crown,
All hail to thee, New Friscol
-LA