Red Jacket (from Aloft)
[Impromptu on Buffalo City’s monument to, and re-burial of the old Iroquois orator, October 9, 1884.]
[Impromptu on Buffalo City’s monument to, and re-burial of the old Iroquois orator, October 9, 1884.]
Upon this scene, this show,
Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,
(Nor in caprice alone — some grains of deepest meaning,)
Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds’ blended shapes,
As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill’d with its soul,
Product of Nature’s sun, stars, earth direct — a towering human form,
In hunting-shirt of film, arm’d with the rifle, a half-ironical smile curving its phantom
lips,
Like one of Ossian’s ghosts looks down.