An Unknown Grave In Ohio Poem by John James Piatt

Why came I here to live? Because he came
Hither, my great-grandsire, who came-to die.
Leading his little neighbor dwelling band,
A century and thirteen years ago,
Across the mountain wilderness, he came,
Who had left his all to serve the Common Weal;
Then out of all that seven-years' fight unscathed,
In which his sword was given to Her, our Land,
(In which his life was offered, too, for Her,)
Briefly indeed went back unto his plow
Like him our prototype of Roman name,
Like him our chieftain first and best beloved;
Then hither brought his sword, to give his life
In that lost fight there in the marshy wood,
First of his name to touch the Ohio sod,
Only to bathe it with his blood, and fill
An unknown grave in the vast wilderness.
True son of the Revolution thou, indeed!
Ohio-born in thy baptism of blood,
But in an unknown sepulchre dost sleep,
Like him of old whose burial no man saw,

And no man knoweth his grave unto this day:
Not all forgotten could I lay my flower
(My poor unworthy bud, not bloom, of song)
Where it might bear me witness, me thy heir
In that great brotherhood with him thy chief,
Who wept unwonted passionate angry tears
To learn thy fate, with theirs thy fellows - thou
Who wouldst not leave, and didst not leave the field:
He brought his sword and gave his life no less,
Rock-built metropolis of my Valley Land,
To make thine earlier tenure possible
In that stronghold named for his comrade chief
(His brother in the brave fraternity
Named for that Roman name which soon was thine)
He brought his sword and gave his life no less,
Ohio, toward thy making, he who sleeps
There in thy unrecognizable earth,
Whose coming hither was his going hence,
Whose going hence my coming hither brought,
By some mysterious thread of human fate
That drew in far-off years all mine and me.