 | The Genius of Sequoyah |  |
1. Sequoyah
Great man? Or wondrous, should I say?
For, like a comet bursting into sight,
Launched unexpected on its artic way,
Through boundless fields of rayless polar night,
Eclipsing constellations in its flight--
A flaming orb thou wert, and unforetold,
Whose distance, altitude, and awful size
No man, no kalendar however old,
Could tell; and sweeping through the frigid skies,
In its own distance fades from human eyes.
For, like a comet bursting into sight,
Launched unexpected on its artic way,
Through boundless fields of rayless polar night,
Eclipsing constellations in its flight--
A flaming orb thou wert, and unforetold,
Whose distance, altitude, and awful size
No man, no kalendar however old,
Could tell; and sweeping through the frigid skies,
In its own distance fades from human eyes.
So, thou Sequoyah, from thy Maker's hand,
Wast hurled prodigious through the skies of time,
Untaught, original, and strangely grand,
Thy mighty genius rose and shone sublime,
The wonder of all eyes, in every clime.
'Twas meet that, when thy day was spent, the ground
Should fall to give thy sacred ashes room;
No low-built grave for thee shall e'er be found
Beneath the sky: 'tis needless to inhume
A Sun gone out - the universe its tomb.
Wast hurled prodigious through the skies of time,
Untaught, original, and strangely grand,
Thy mighty genius rose and shone sublime,
The wonder of all eyes, in every clime.
'Twas meet that, when thy day was spent, the ground
Should fall to give thy sacred ashes room;
No low-built grave for thee shall e'er be found
Beneath the sky: 'tis needless to inhume
A Sun gone out - the universe its tomb.
| The Genius of Sequoyah | |