Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Eliot’s 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.