Eliot's Oak

[ZaunköniG]

Eliot's Oak


Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud
  With sounds of unintelligible speech,
  Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach,
  Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd;

With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed,
  Thou speakest a different dialect to each;
  To me a language that no man can teach,
  Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud.

For underneath thy shade, in days remote,
  Seated like Abraham at eventide
  Beneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknown

Apostle of the Indians, Eliot, wrote
  His Bible in a language that hath died
  And is forgotten, save by thee alone.

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