| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893. | | | | A Book of Sonnets | | 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, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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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