The Major Breaks Into Rhyme

The Major Breaks Into Rhyme
101

Not less stentorian than the
angry surf that beats the shore of,
Monterey Bay is the lyric defy
urled by Major McLaughlin, of
Santa Cruz and San Francisco,
at Wallace Irwin of New York
Though of world-wide celebrity
as a financier Major McLaugh- lin is
unknown as a communicant of the Muses
He makes no pre- enion to skill as a
lyric artist, chough he has a fine
taste for gems of poetic genius
He can distinguish brut from sec,
at a sip but the waters that gush rom the
sacred springs of Cas- alia and Hippocrene are no
more exhilarating to the Major
than a cup that cheers from
Spring Val- ey However, upon sufficient
provocation, he can utter himself n
indifferent metre, a fact that he has
demonstrated in several Can
Francso without any apolo- gies
to Wallace Irwin”
That young gentleman has been sing- ing of ”
The Hope of Western;
Empire,” being “low in the dust” because the
“Reaper’s will be, done,” neglecting to state
what will be done He probably meant that the
Reaper’s will will be done, but he didn’t say so
It is not to Irwin’s faulty ellipsis that Major McLaughlin
objects, but to his sentiments, and he does so in a
paraphrase of Irwin In the vehement and impasioned
heat of his conceptions indignation and civic
pride are blent and San Francisco
redivivus attains the definite visibility of a crystal:
Though we know the whole world pulses,
Though we know man builds on sand,
Yet with streets and lanes we line the planes
And we call it “God’s fair land
We will build our towers of granite,
We will amke them wide and tall;
Tho’ ‘neath our feet was “The Demon’s Seat,”
For we know God rules o’er all
The sunlight and the mist-winds
Still make our glorious clime-
Tho’ the all-wise God of Destiny
Smote us for a time

The bay where Drake made merry
Upon the Golden Hind,
The bay that brought the argo- nauts
A modern fleece to find,
With its city of the Western Empire
Still commands the Orient sea:
For again from the dust of the frail Earth’s crust

We are building it fair to see
The winds sweep away the fog bank,
Through blue skies shines the sun;
And the city we’ll build shail never fade
Until the Reaper’s work is done