A 1878 popular song.
Words and music by M. L. Rentfrow.
Sheet music provided by Jonathan Parks.
Accompaniment by Jonathan Parks:
Accompaniment mp3 audio:
Lyrics
1. One evening on the second of last May
No doubt you remember well the day
How the Fire King while passing on his way
Through gloomy space
Stopp’d and with glaring eyes looked down
On our proud city with a frown
And pass’d its sentence there upon
Minneapolis
Chorus
Fire! Fire! Fire! the bells kept tolling
As the Hose Carts thro’ the streets went rolling
Toward the scene of death
Extolling men to follow on
2. The Mills stood there in proud assurity
Feeling no doubt their great security
As the sun’s last beam in all its purity
Glanced dimly round
The huge wheels turn’d with steady motion
While honest men with devotion
Toil’d on with little thought or notion
Of what would come
3. The crash it came like quick’ning Thunder
Which caused brave men to stare with wonder
As the Mills like bubbles burst assunder
Crumbling to the ground
Far out into the coming night
for several hundred feet in height
The blaze stream’d up with lurid light
Which shone for miles around
4. All that was left next morn to tell
Of how those mighty Mills had fell
Was a smoking mass of crumbled walls
Which lay beneath our feet
Sorrowing wives and friends were there
O’er whose brow was mark’d despair
For those who died in youth so fair
Their fate to meet
Sung here by Laurence Rubenstein: