An Old English Oak

Hanford Lennox Gordon 1836 ( Andover, New York, ) – 1920 ( Minnesota)



Silence is the voice of mighty things.
In silence dropped the acorn in the rain;
In silence slept till sun-touched. Wondrous life
Peeped from the mold and oped its eyes on morn.
Up-grew in silence through a thousand years
The Titan-armed, gnarl-jointed, rugged oak,
Rock-rooted. Through his beard and shaggy locks
Soft breezes sung and tempests roared: the rain
A thousand summers trickled down his beard;
A thousand winters whitened on his head;
Yet spake he not. He, from his coigne of hills,
Beheld the rise and fall of empire, saw
The pageantry and perjury of kings,
The feudal barons and the slavish churls,
The peace of peasants; heard the merry song
Of mowers singing to the swing of scythes,
The solemn-voiced, low-wailing funeral dirge
Winding slow-paced with death to humble graves;
And heard the requiem sung for coffined kings.
Saw castles rise and castles crumble down,
Abbeys up-loom and clang their solemn bells,
And heard the owl hoot ruin on their walls:
Beheld a score of battle fields corpse-strewn
Blood-fertiled with ten thousand flattered fools
Who, but to please the vanity of one,
Marched on hurrahing to the doom of death
And spake not, neither sighed nor made a moan.
Saw from the blood of heroes roses spring,
And where the clangor of steel-sinewed War
Roared o'er embattled rage, heard gentle Peace
To bleating hills and vales of rustling gold
Flute her glad notes from morn till even-tide.
Grim with the grime of a thousand years he stood
Grand in his silence, mighty in his years.
Under his shade the maid and lover wooed;
Under his arms their children's children played
And lambkins gamboled; at his feet by night
The heart-sick wanderer laid him down and died,
And he looked on in silence.
  
Silent hours
In ghostly pantomime on tip-toe tripped
The stately minuet of the passing years,
Until the horologe of Time struck One.
Black Thunder growled and from his throne of gloom
Fire-flashed the night with hissing bolt, and lo,
Heart-split, the giant of a thousand years
Uttered one voice and like a Titan fell,
Crashing one hammer-clang, and passed away.
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:47 min read
8

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABXXCXXBXXXXAAXAXXAXXXXXDXXXXXXEXCXXXEX XXCDXXCXX
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 2,039
Words 355
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 39, 9

Hanford Lennox Gordon

Gen. Hanford Lennox Gordon, prominent among the organizers of the State of Minnesota and for over thirty years a resident of California, died in his sleep Thursday morning at his daughter's residence here. Although given up to die in his thirties and a semi-invalid he attained nearly 84 years. He was a poet as well as a pioneer and shortly before his death revised his "Indian Legends and Other Poems." He won his military title fighting against the Sioux during Minnesota's bloodiest days of massacre, but afterward was a great friend of the Indians and was adopted into the Sioux tribe, an honor granted few white men. He was an officer and organizer of the gallant First Minnesota regiment which made a magnificent charge at Round Top during the Civil War, a feat which he embalmed in majestic verse. After the war he devoted himself to law and lumbering. For years he stood at the head of the bar in Minnesota. He took a strong interest in politics and helped to organize the Republican party in his State. He cast his first vote for Abraham Lincoln and was repeatedly elected to high office. After coming to California he took up ranching and he had a considerable part in the developing of southwestern Los Angeles, having at one time owned all of Kinney Heights. Burial will be at Rosedale Cemetery today. more…

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