Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Eliot's Oak lyrics

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.