I like to think of him, and see his works: I like to read him in his mounds, And think I can make out a good deal of his history. He was a half-dumb man, Very sorrowful to see, But brave, nevertheless, and bravely Struggling to fling out his thoughts, In a kind of dumb speech; Struggling, indeed, after poetry Daedalian forms, and eloquence; Ambitious of distinguishing himself In the presence of wolves and bisons And all organic creatures; Of making his claim good Against these, his urgent disputants, That he was lord of the planet. If he could not write books, He could scrawl the earth with his record: He could make hieroglyphs, Constellations of mounds and animals, Effigies of unnamable things, Monsters, and hybrids unnatural, Bred of grotesque fancies; and man-forms. These last, none of your pigmies A span long in the womb, And six feet, at full growth, out of it-- But bigger in chest and paunch, In the girth of his muscular shackle-bones, Round his colossal shoulders, Round his Memnonian countenance, Over the dome of his skull-crypts-- From crown to foot of his body-- Than grimmest of old Welsh giants, Grimmest of Araby ogres! Many a time talking with gray hunters, Who leaned on their rifles against a tree, And made the bright landscape And the golden morning fuller of gold and brightness By the contrast of their furrowed faces, Their shaggy eyebrows, And the gay humor laughing in their eyes, Their unkempt locks, their powder horns, and buskins, And the wild attire, in general, of their persons-- Many a time have I heard them Tell of these man-effigies Lying prone on the floors of the prairie. And, in my whim for correspondence, And perpetual seeking after identities, I have likened them to the stone sculptures, in cathedrals, Cut by pious hands out of black marble, Memorial resemblances of holy abbots, Of Christian knights, founders of religious houses, Of good lords of fair manors, Who left largess to these houses, Beneficed the arched wine-cellars With yearly butts of canary, Or, during their lifetime, Beautified the west front with stately windows Of colored glass, emblazoned with Scripture stories, The sunlight in shadowy reflections painting the figures With blue and gold and crimson Upon the cold slabs of the pavement.