The Lay of the Band 
white oak, so old that they had become solitary, their 
comrades having fallen one by one, or else, unable to 
loose the grip upon the soil that had widened and 
tightened through centuries, they had died stand- 
ing. It was upon one of these that the buzzard sat 
humped. 
Directly in my path stood an ancient swamp white 
oak, the greatest tree, I think, that I have ever seen. 
It was not the highest, nor the largest round, per- 
haps, but individually, spiritually, the greatest. Hoary, 
hollow, and broken-limbed, its huge bole seemed en- 
circled with the centuries, and into its green and 
grizzled top all the winds of heaven had some time 
come. 
One could worship in the presence of such a tree 
as easily as in the shadow of a vast cathedral. 
For it had bene an auncient tree, 
Sacred with many a mysteree. 
Indeed, what is there built with hands that has the 
dignity, the majesty, the divinity of life? And what 
life was here! Life whose beginnings lay so far back 
that I could no more reckon the years than I could 
count the atoms it had builded into this majestic 
form. 
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