Day 58 A.K. 2-27-2010

On February 27,1807 poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine. AK likes his poem about an oak tree. He offers this tree as a tribute (The tree is printed on a reusable grocery bag made from recycled materials).

 

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.

Done