Said Filson: “Comrades, hear my words:
Ere three-score years have flown
Our town will be a city vast.”
Loud laughed Bob Patterson.
Still John exclaimed, with prophet-tongue,
“A city fair and proud,
The Queen of Cities in the West!”
Mat Denman laughed aloud.
Deep in the wild and solemn woods
Unknown to white man’s track,
John Filson went, one autumn day,
But nevermore came back.
He struggled through the solitude
The inland to explore,
And with romantic pleasure traced
Miami’s winding shore.
Across his path the startled deer
Bounds to its shelter green;
He enters every lonely vale
And cavernous ravine.
Too soon the murky twilight comes,
The boding night-winds moan;
Bewildered wanders Filson, lost,
Exhausted, and alone.
By lurking foes his steps are dogged,
A yell his ear appalls!
A ghastly corpse, upon the ground,
A murdered man, he falls.
The Indian, with instinctive hate,
In him a herald saw
Of coming hosts of pioneers,
The friends of light and law;
In him beheld the champion
Of industries and arts,
The founder of encroaching roads
And great commercial marts;
The spoiler of the hunting-ground,
The plower of the sod,
The builder of the Christian school
And of the house of God.