The Young Shall Inherit the Earth.....

The Old Oak.

See the old oak on the village green,

For three hundred years it has been

Standing sentry as the world passed by,
Saw poor men born and great men die.

The simple acorn where it lay,

Buried in autumn by the Jay,

For winter food when snows abound,

Left, forgotten in the ground.

In year one, it was one foot high,

Fighting, reaching for the sky.

The sheep that ate the short sweet grass,

Grazed around it, left it fast.

Five years after its life began,

Now as tall as a grown man,

Many saplings from nearby,

Wither, dry and sadly die.

At twenty years it was twenty feet,

Now a tree, almost complete,

It was a feature on the green,

From a distance, could be seen.

Children who had watched it grow,

Were fathers, mothers, married now,

Some were taken, in their prime,

Many years before their time.

Others to the wars had gone,

Noble causes to be won,

Some returned, limbs astray,

Others buried where they lay.

Kings and Queens came and went,

In a twinkling, their time was spent,

Dictators too, came one by one,

Just like mortals, they too are gone.

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The train that passed, oozing steam,

Shocked the tree, from out its dream,

Infernal engines, soon the car,

Rolled on by to places far.

The aeroplanes, the early flight,

Now fly past, both day and night,

Taking people to distant places,

Bringing back, so many races.

Houses by the green were built,

All around trash and filth,

Peace and quiet, no longer known,

Courtesies, no longer shown.

Why must the past be undone,

Where is the happiness, where is the fun?

Life will never be the same,

Yet what is life, nought but a game.

Three hundred years, have gone so fast,

But all that now is in the past,

The sapling growing by its bough,

Is the future, its time is now.

In its life, what shall it see?

So much more than the old tree,

But unless man shall contrive,

He and it shall ne’er survive.

………..Mike...............