Leaves of Grass Annexes: Sands at Seventy (1st Annex, 1888); Good-Bye My Fancy (2nd Annex, 1891); A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads (1888)

Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892. Leaves of Grass Annexes: Sands at Seventy (1st Annex, 1888); Good-Bye My Fancy (2nd Annex, 1891); A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads (1888)
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RED JACKET (FROM ALOFT.)

[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.