ARBOR DA Y MANUAL . 
337 
ELIOT’S OAK. 
T HOU ancient oak ! whose myriad leaves are loud 
With sounds of unintelligible speech. 
Sounds as of surges on a shingly beech. 
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. 
Longfellow, 
SONNET. 
T F in the field I meet a smiling flower, 
1 Methinks it whispers, “ God created me, 
And I to Him devote my little hour, 
In lonely sweetness and humility.” 
If, where the forest’s darkest shadows lower, 
A serpent quick and venomous I see, 
It seems to say,— “ I, too, extol the power 
Of Him, who caused me, at His will, to be.” 
The fountain purling, and the river strong, 
The rbcks, the trees, the mountains raise one song; 
“ Glory to God ! ” re-echoes in mine ear ; 
Faithless were I, in wilful error blind, 
Did I not Him in all His creatures find, 
His voice through heaven, and earth, and ocean hear. 
Montgomery. 
PASSION-FLOWER. 
RT thou a type of beauty, or of power, 
IT Of sweet enjoyment, or disastrous sin ? 
For each thy name denoteth, Passion-flower 1 ! 
O no ! thy pure corolla’s depth within 
We trace a holier symbol; yea, a sign 
’Twixt God and man ; a record of that hour. 
When the expiatory act divine 
Cancelled that curse which was our mortal dower. 
It is the Cross ! 
Sir Aubrey de Vere. 
