The great elm-tree, under which this treaty was made, became celebrated from that day. When in the American war the British general Simcoe was quartered at Kensington, he so respected it, that when his soldiers were cutting down every tree for fire-wood, he placed a sentinel under it, that not a branch of it might be touched. In 1812 it was blown down, when its trunk was split into wood, and cups and other articles were made of it, to be kept as memorials of it.
LINES
On receiving from Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, a piece of the Tree under which William Penn made his Treaty with the Indians, and which was blown down in 1812, converted to the purpose of an Inkstand.
BY WILLIAM ROSCOE, ESQ.
From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
The war-fiend raised his hateful yell,
And midst the storm that realms deplore,
Penn’s honour’d tree of concord fell.
And of that tree, that ne’er again
Shall Spring’s reviving influence know,
A relic, o’er th’ Atlantic main,
Was sent—the gift of foe to foe!
But though no more its ample shade
Wave green beneath Columbia’s sky,
Though every branch be now decay’d,
And all its scatter’d leaves be dry;
Yet, midst this relic’s sainted space,
A health-restoring flood shall spring,
In which the angel-form of Peace
May stoop to dip her dove-like wing.
So once the staff the prophet bore,
By wondering eyes again was seen
To swell with life through every pore,
And bud afresh with foliage green.