Still to be glimpsed: but only just

Why I've seen him, at evening, stand and secure with a single glance the Pleiades! And how he possesses (with a suzerain ease long ago lost to mere princes) this earth he's on: pocketing stones for the feel of them against his palm; or, in an hour, acquiring more burrs stuck to his clothes and more leaves bonfire- bright in his hair than you, I suspect, even as a lad could call your own. And how he is master of all weathers! appearing in them as if they were so many splendid costumes especially issued for his personal use: at dusk wrapped in a toga of mist or sporting, like a great cloak billowing from his bones, whole Alpine storms. . . . Thirsty, he knows where even in droughts clear waters hold; hungry, can feed on mushrooms, cresses, and all the wild barbed fruits to be plucked, and eaten as plucked, en route. . . . Alone, he may converse with the shyest of birds; intercept scents and decipher prints: being, as both sovereign and subject of a realm, privy to even the most minuscule of kin, from hooded to scaled, crouched to coiled. In grove or on slope, stiffened as a stag he has overheard such rumors, such clues as few habitues of salon or club are likely to have caught. And since what thus can be glimpsed of him: this sinew-and-leather frame, this gaze of a cruising hawk - with a footloose ease that for all its randomness is, one would guess, as powered to leap as a lion's tread - Since this he is: I'm amazed, Sir (if I may say so) that you, peering out from your stalled limousine should perceive only elbows sticking through holes - and not But he's gone! Without sound or sign vanished from a road as carelessly crossed as if, for him, of no more account than a cursory track aswarm with those impelled to pursue some rumored Scoop, some drummed-up Grael neon-lit. . . . While here? Ah, here how vast the vacancy left by him! And how all about, in a stillness that moment by moment grows until it's become a whole world's stop the shadowy questions begin to stir. . . .