Phil Keaggy – The Talking Oak lyrics

Beyond the lodge the city lies
Beneath its drift of smoke
And ah, with what delighted eyes
I turn to yonder oak

Hail hidden to the knees and fern
Broad oak of summer chase
Whose top most branches can discern
The roofs of summer place

Say thou where on I carved her name
If ever a maid or spouse
As fair as my Olivia came
To rest beneath thy bows
But tell me did she read the name
I carved with many vows
When last with throbbing heart I came
To rest beneath thy bows

Oh yes she wandered round and round
These knotted knees of mine
And found and kissed the name she found
And sweetly murmured thine

A teardrop trembled from its source
And down thy surface crept
My sense of touch is something course,
But I believe she wept
Then flushed her cheek with rosy light
She glanced across the plain
But not a creature was in sight
She kissed me once again

Her kisses were so close and kind
That trust me on my word
Hard wood I am and wrinkled rind
But yet my sap was stirred
And even in my innermost ring
A pleasure I discern
Like those blind motions of the spring
That show the year has turned