Classic Poem

TO AN OAK TREE

Emblem of England's ancient faith,
Full proudly may thy branches wave,
Where loyalty lies low in death,
And valor fills a timeless grave.

And thou, brave tenant of the tomb!
Repine not if our clime deny,
Above thine honored sod to bloom,
The flowerets of a milder sky.

These owe their birth to genial May;
Beneath a fiercer sun they pine,
Before the winter storm decay —
And can their worth be type of thine?

No! for 'mid storms of Fate opposing,
Still higher swelled thy dauntless heart,
And, while Despair the scene was closing,
Commenced thy brief but brilliant part.

'T was then thou sought'st on Albyn's hill,
(When England's sons the strife resigned,)
A rugged race resisting still,
And unsubdued, though unrefined.

Thy death's hour heard no kindred wail,
No holy knell thy requiem rung;
Thy mourners were the plaided Gael,
Thy dirge the clamorous pibroch sung.

Yet who, in Fortune's summer-shine
To waste life's longest term away,
Would change that glorious dawn of thine
Though darkened ere its noontide day?

Be thine the Tree whose dauntless boughs
Brave summer's drought and winter's gloom!
Rome bound with oak her patriot's brows,
As Albyn shadows Wogan's tomb.