Eliots Oak

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    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.