Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — Eliots Oak

Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud        &nbsp With sounds of unintelligible speech,        &nbsp Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach,        &nbsp Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd; With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed,        &nbsp Thou speakest a different dialect to each;        &nbsp To me a language that no man can teach,        &nbsp Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud. For underneath thy shade, in days remote,        &nbsp Seated like Abraham at eventide        &nbsp Beneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknown Apostle of the Indians, Eliot, wrote        &nbsp His Bible in a language that hath died        &nbsp And is forgotten, save by thee alone.