These effigies, stiff, formal, Rudely fashioned, and of poor art, All of them lying, black and stark, Like a corpse-pageantry visioned in some monk's dream, Lying thus, in the transepts, On the cold, gray floor of the cathedral. A curious conceit, truly! But the prairie is also consecrated, And quite as sacred I think it As Rome's most holy of holies. It blossoms and runs over with religion. These meek and beautiful flowers! What sweet thoughts and divine prayers are in them! These song birds! what anthems of praise Gush out of their ecstatic throats! I pray you, also, tell me, What floors, sacred to what dead, Can compare with the elaborate mosaic work Of this wide, vast, outstretching floor of grass? As good a place, I take it, For the mound builder to make his man-effigies Out of the mould in, As the cathedral is, for its artists To make man-effigies out of the black marble! And the thought, too, is the same! The thought of the primeval savage of the stone era, Roaming about in these wilds, Before the beautiful Christ Made the soul more beautiful, Revealed the terror of its divine forces, Announced its immortality, And was nailed on a tree for His goodness! While the monk, therefore, lay yet in the pagan brain, And' Time had not so much as thought Of sowing the seed for his coming-- While his glorious cathedral, which, as we now know it, Is an epic poem built in immortal stone, Had no archetype except in the dreams of God, Dim hints of it, lying like hopeless runes In the forest trees and arches, Its ornamentations in the snow drifts, and the summer leaves and flowers-- No doubt, the mound-builder's man, put in effigy on the prairie, Had been a benefactor, in his way and time; Or, a great warrior; or learned teacher Of things symbolized in certain mound-groups, And which, from their arrangement, Appertain, it would seem, to mysteries, And ghostly communications. They thought to keep green his memory, The worship of him and his good deeds, Unto the end of time, Throughout all generations. The holy men, born of Christ, All Christendom but the development of him, And all the world his debtor; Even God owing him more largely Than He has thought fit to pay back, Taking the immense credit Of nigh two thousand years! These holy men, so born and cultured, Could think of no way wiser, Of no securer method Of preserving the memory of their saints, And of those who did good to them, Than this rude, monumental way of the savage. So singular is man, So old-fashioned his thinkings,