Only second to the Chicago fire in destructiveness was that which visited Boston in the following year. It started on Saturday evening, November 9; 1872, and sixty-five acres were laid waste before it was controlled.
O BROAD-BREASTED Queen among Nations!
O Mother, so strong in thy youth!
Has the Lord looked upon thee in ire,
And willed thou be chastened by fire,
Without any ruth?
Has the Merciful tired of His mercy,
And turned from thy sinning in wrath,
That the world with raised hand sees and
Thy desolate daughters, thy cities,
Despoiled on their path?
One year since thy youngest was stricken:
Thy eldest lies stricken to-day.
Ah! God, was Thy wrath without pity,
To tear the strong heart from our city,
And cast it away?
O Father! forgive us our doubting;
The stain from our weak souls efface; Thou rebukest, we know, but to chasten, Thy hand has but fallen to hasten
Return to Thy grace.
Let us rise purified from our ashes
As sinners have risen who grieved;
Let us show that twice-sent desolation
On every true heart in the nation
Has conquest achieved.
JOHN BOYLE O'Reilly.
The district burned contained the finest business blocks in the city, and the loss was estimated at $80,000,000. For a time, it seemed that the famous "Old South" would be destroyed.
THE CHURCH OF THE REVOLUTION
LOUD through the still November air
The clang and clash of fire-bells broke; From street to street, from square to square, Rolled sheets of flame and clouds of smoke.
The marble structures reeled and fell,
The iron pillars bowed like lead;
But one lone spire rang on its bell
Above the flames. Men passed, and said,
"The Old South stands!"
The gold moon, 'gainst a copper sky,
Hung like a portent in the air,
The midnight came, the wind rose high,
And men stood speechless in despair.
But, as the marble columns broke,
And wider grew the chasm red,
A seething gulf of flame and smoke,
The firemen marked the spire and said,
"The Old South stands!"
Beyond the harbor, calm and fair,
The sun came up through bars of gold, Then faded in a wannish glare,
As flame and smoke still upward rolled. The princely structures, crowned with art, Where Commerce laid her treasures bare; The haunts of trade, the common mart, All vanished in the withering air,
"The Old South stands!"
"The Old South must be levelled soon
To check the flames and save the street;
Bring fuse and powder." But at noon
The ancient fane still stood complete.
The mitred flame had lipped the spire,
The smoke its blackness o'er it cast;
Then, hero-like, men fought the fire,
And from each lip the watchword passed,
"The Old South stands!'
All night the red sea round it rolled,
And o'er it fell the fiery rain:
And, as each hour the old clock told,
Men said, ""T will never strike again!"
But still the dial-plate at morn
Was crimsoned in the rising light. Long may it redden with the dawn, And mark the shading hours of night! Long may it stand!
Long may it stand! where help was sought
In weak and dark and doubtful days;
Where freedom's lessons first were taught,
And prayers of faith were turned to praise;
Where burned the first Shekinah's flame
In God's new temples of the free;
Long may it stand, in freedom's name,
Like Israel's pillar by the sea!
Long may it stand!
HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH.
THE RIDE OF COLLINS GRAVES
The nation rushed to Boston's aid just as it had done to Chicago's, and the city soon rose from her ashes greater than ever.
WHILE far along the eastern sky
I saw the flags of Havoc fly,
As if his forces would assault
The sovereign of the starry vault
And hurl Him back the burning rain
That seared the cities of the plain,
I read as on a crimson page
The words of Israel's sceptred sage:
For riches make them wings, and they Do as an eagle fly away.
O vision of that sleepless night,
What hue shall paint the mocking light
That burned and stained the orient skies
Where peaceful morning loves to rise,
As if the sun had lost his way
And dawned to make a second day,
Above how red with fiery glow,
How dark to those it woke below!
On roof and wall, on dome and spire,
Flashed the false jewels of the fire;
Girt with her belt of glittering panes,
And crowned with starry-gleaming vanes,
Our northern queen in glory shone
With new-born splendors not her own,
And stood, transfigured in our eyes,
A victim decked for sacrifice!
The cloud still hovers overhead,
And still the midnight sky is red;
As the lost wanderer strays alone
To seek the place he called his own,
His devious footprints sadly tell
How changed the pathways known so
well;
The scene, how new! The tale, how old
Ere yet the ashes have grown cold!
Again I read the words that came
Writ in the rubric of the flame:
Howe'er we trust to mortal things,
Each hath its pair of folded wings;
Though long their terrors rest unspread
Their fatal plumes are never shed;
At last, at last, they stretch in flight,
And blot the day and blast the night!
The peaceful valley has waked and stirred, And the answering echoes of life are heard; The dew still clings to the trees and grass, And the early toilers smiling pass,
As they glance aside at the white-walled homes,
Or up the valley, where merrily comes
The brook that sparkles in diamond rills
As the sun comes over the Hampshire hills.
What was it passed like an ominous breath-
Like a shiver of fear, or a touch of death?
What was it? The valley is peaceful still.
And the leaves are afire on top of the hill;
It was not a sound, nor a thing of sense.
But a pain, like the pang of the short sus-
pense
That thrills the being of those who see
At their feet the gulf of Eternity.
The air of the valley has felt the chill; The workers pause at the door of the mill;
The housewife, keen to the shivering air, Arrests her foot on the cottage stair, Instinctive taught by the mother-love, And thinks of the sleeping ones above.
Why start the listeners? Why does the course
Of the mill-stream widen? Is it a horse
"Hark to the sound of the hoofs!" they say
That gallops so wildly Williamsburg way?
God! what was that, like a human shriek
From the winding valley? Will nobody speak?
Will nobody answer those women who cry
As the awful warnings thunder by?
Whence come they? Listen! and now they hear
The sound of the galloping horse-hoofs near;
They watch the trend of the vale, and see
The rider who thunders so menacingly,
With waving arms and warning scream
To the home-filled banks of the valley stream.
He draws no rein, but he shakes the street
With a shout and the ring of the galloping feet,
And this the cry he flings to the wind,
To the hills for your lives! The flood is behind!"
He cries and is gone, but they know the worst,
The breast of the Williamsburg dam has burst! The basin that nourished their happy homes Is changed to a demon. It comes! it comes!
|