-
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.

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