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By Herman Scheffauer (This, one of the best of the poems inspired by the San Francisco disaster of 1906, describes the splendid ruins of old Grace Church on California Street. It has appeared in a volume of Scheffauer’s poems published by A. M. Robertson of this city.) A Temple in a Sunset Land I saw, Rent with an earthquake’s throes and storms of fire, And o’er it brooded wide with spells of awe The doom that fell on Sidon and on Tyre. And many an arch and ruinous portal there Stood stored with memories of a perished time; The start stones yielded echoes of a prayer; The towers quivered with a ghostly chime. Faint from the shattered font an infant’s cry Came forth, and soft the crumbling pillars shed The strains of nuptial music blithe and high; The paves rolled dolorous music o’er the dead. But when the moon smote with her wands of white The solemn wreck whence all these voices poured, I heard Time’s pinions beat across the night And saw the gleam of Death’s annulling sword. Poems About San Francisco Town Talk The Pacific Weekly June 8, 1912 |
