“Ho! Ho!” cry the chiefs of the Illini proud,
To the braves of the Lakes on the prairie below,
“Ye have come in the sun, ye will go in the cloud,
As the hatchet-wolves run to the timber—Ho! ho!”—
“Ho! Ho!” answer back the Lake Plumes, in their ire,
“’Tis the North winds that wither, and waste and destroy,
We have come in the blast, and will go in the fire.”
Then loud laughed the Rock of the blue Illinois:
The gray rock that hung
O’er the billows of blooms,