Canto XCIX

Unwatch'd the garden bough shall sway,

      The tender blossom flutter down,

      Unloved that beech will gather brown,

This maple burn itself away;

Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,

      Ray round with flames her disk of seed,

      And many a rose-carnation feed

With summer spice the humming air;

Unloved, by many a sandy bar,

      The brook shall babble down the plain,

      At noon or when the lesser wain

Is twisting round the polar star;

Uncared for, gird the windy grove,

      And flood the haunts of hern and crake;

      Or into silver arrows break

The sailing moon in creek and cove;

Till from the garden and the wild

      A fresh association blow,

      And year by year the landscape grow

Familiar to the stranger's child;

As year by year the labourer tills

      His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;

      And year by year our memory fades

From all the circle of the hills.