Explore "The Song of the Oak" by G.K. Chesterton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Druids waved their golden knives / And danced around the Oak / When they had sacrificed a man; / But though the learned search and scan, / No single modern person can / Entirely see the joke. / But though they cut the throats of men / They cut not down the tree, / And from the blood the saplings sprang / Of oak-woods yet to be. / But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood, / He rots the tree as ivy would, / He clings and crawls as ivy would / About the sacred tree.
King Charles he fled from Worcester fight / And hid him in an Oak; / In convent schools no man of tact / Would trace and praise his every act, / Or argue that he was in fact / A strict and sainted bloke, / But not by him the sacred woods / Have lost their fancies free, / And though he was extremely big / He did not break the tree. / But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood, / He breaks the tree as ivy would, / And eats the woods as ivy would / Between us and the sea.