Carl Sandburg mourns the disappearance of the great buffalo herds and the generation of people who witnessed them. The speaker repeats the simple fact “The buffaloes are gone” like a quiet tolling bell, then turns to the memory of those who saw the animals “by thousands” moving through the prairie dusk, their heads lowered as they pawed the ground into dust. That image is powerful and almost ceremonial—the buffaloes become part of a vast, fading pageant. But the witnesses are gone too, so the memory itself is slipping away. The mood is elegiac and hushed, full of awe for something huge and wild that cannot be brought back. It feels like standing at the edge of twilight, watching the last trace of a world disappear.
Buffalo Dusk — Summary
The buffaloes are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone. Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk, Those who saw the buffaloes are gone. And the buffaloes are gone.