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Red Jacket (from Aloft)

About This Item

  • Title: Red Jacket (from Aloft)
  • Date: 10 October 1884
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00069
  • Source: The Philadelphia Press 10 October 1884: 4. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of an original issue. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the periodical poems, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang April Lambert Susan Belasco
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Red Jacket (from Aloft)." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 26 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00069.xml (TEI)
per.00069.004per.00069.004_cropped

RED JACKET (FROM ALOFT.)1

[Impromptu on Buffalo City's commemoration of and monument to 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. WALT WHITMAN. Camden, N.J., Oct. 9, 1884.

Notes

1. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]

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