The Great Fire of Ingersoll

’Twas on a pleasant eve in May.
Just as the sun shed its last ray,
The bell it rang, citizens to warn,
For lo! a fire appears in barn.

An ancient barn near hotel stood,
The joining buildings all were wood;
This barn a relic of the past,
There farmers’ horses were made fast.

Our once fair town is now in woe,
And we have had our Chicago;
But soon a nobler town will rise,
For Ingersoll’s all enterprise.

For water far town need not seek,
As there is river and the creek
Just find the means it to apply
And then all fires must quickly die.

Where this text comes from

First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L16.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “The Great Fire of Ingersoll.” First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/the-great-fire-of-ingersoll/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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