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Page 16
"The King is dead, long live the King!"
Upon the demise of the old monarch, the title naturally passed to the
White Oak, its neighbor, another of the race of Titans, standing
conveniently near, of whose early history very little is positively
known beyond the fact that it is an old tree; and with the title passed
the traditions and reverence that gather about crowned heads.
Mrs. Stowe has given it a new claim to notice, for beneath it, according
to Drake's Historic Middlesex, "Sam Lawson, the good-natured, lazy
story-teller, in Oldtown Folks, put his blacksmith's shop. It was
removed when the church was built."
The present Eliot Oak stands east of the Unitarian meeting-house, which
church is on or near the spot where Eliot's first church stood. It
measured, January, 1884, seventeen feet in circumference at the ground;
fourteen feet two inches at four feet above. It is a fine old tree, and
it is not improbable--though it is unproven--that it dates back to the
first settlement of Natick.
"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 oak of Mamre, the unknown
Apostle of the Indian, Eliot, wrote
His Bible in a language that hath died.
And is forgotten save by thee alone."--_Longfellow_.
* * * * *
HIS GREATEST TRIUMPH.
By Henrietta E. Page.
Yet slept the wearied m�stro, and all around was still,
Though the sunlight danced on tree-top, on valley, and on hill;
The distant city's busy hum, just faintly heard afar,
Served but to lull to deeper rest Euterpe's brilliant star.
Wilhelmj slept, for over-night his triumphs had been grand,
He had praised and f�ted been by the noblest in the land,
And rich and poor had vied alike to honor Music's king,
Making the lofty rafters with the wildest plaudits ring.
Now, brain and hand aweary, he had fled for peace and rest,
And he should be disturbed by none, not e'en a royal guest.
The porter nodded in his chair: I dare not say he slept:
But sprang upright, as through the door a fairy vision crept.
A tiny girl with shining eyes, and wavy golden hair,
Tip-toed along the corridor, and close up to his chair,
And a bird-like voice sweet questioned, "Wilhelmj, where is he?
I've brought a little tribute for the great m�stro,--see!"
Her looped-up dress she opened, displaying to his view
A mass of brilliant woodland flowers, wet with morning dew;
Placing his finger on his lip, he pointed out the door;
She smiled her thanks, and softly went and strewed them on the floor.
Then like a vision of the morn, with eyes of heaven's own blue,
She slowly oped the outer door and gently glided through.
Hours after, when Wilhelmj woke he gazed in mute surprise
Upon those buds and blossoms fair, with softened, tender eyes.
They took him back long years agone, when, as a happy child,
He wandered, too, amid the woods, on summer mornings mild;
Aye, back to his home and mother; back to his old home nest,
To the blessed scenes of childhood; back into peace and rest.
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