The longevity of the Oak is supposed to extend beyond that of any other tree. It is through age that the Oak acquires its greatest beauty, which often continues increasing, even into decay, if any proportion exists between the stem and the branches. When the branches rot away, and the trunk is left alone, the tree is in its decrepitude, the last stage of life, and all the beauty is gone.
Spenser has given us a good picture of an Oak just verging towards its last stage of decay:
—A huge Oak, dry and dead,
Still clad with reliques of its trophies old,
Lifting to heaven its aged, hoary head,
Whose foot on earth hath got but feeble hold,
And, half disbowelled, stands above the ground
With wreathed roots, and naked arms,
And trunk all rotten and unsound.
He also compares a gray-headed old man to an aged Oak-tree, covered with frost:
There they do find that goodly aged sire,
With snowy locks adown his shoulders shed;
As hoary frost with spangles doth attire
The mossy branches of an Oak half dead.
Montgomery, too, does not forget to observe the longevity of the sturdy Oak:
As some triumphal Oak, whose boughs have spread
Their changing foliage through a thousand years,
Bows to the rushing wind its glorious head.
As we before noted, the beauty of almost every species of tree increases after its prime; but unless it hath the good fortune to stand in some place of difficult access, or under the protection of some patron whose mansion it adorns, we rarely see it in that grandeur and dignity which it would acquire by age. Some of the noblest Oaks in England were, at least formerly, found in Sussex. They required sometimes a score of oxen to draw them, and were carried on a sort of wain, which in that deep country is expressly called a tugg. It was not uncommon for it to spend two or three years in performing its journey to the Royal dock-yard at Chatham. One tugg carried the load only a little way, and left it for another tugg to take up. If the rains set in, it stirred no more that year; and frequently no part of the next summer was dry enough for the tugg to proceed: so that the timber was generally pretty well seasoned before it arrived at its destination.
In this fallen state alone, it is true, the tree becomes the basis of England's glory, though we regret its fall. Therefore, we must not repine, but address the children of the wood as the gallant Oak, on his removal from the forest, is said to have addressed the scion by his side:
Where thy great grandsire spread his awful shade,
A holy Druid mystic circles made;
Myself a sapling when thy grandsire bore
Intrepid Edward to the Gallic shore.
Me, now my country calls: adieu, my son!
And, as the circling years in order run,
May'st thou renew the forest's boast and pride,
Victorious in some future contest ride.