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 feedWith summer spice the humming air;
Unloved, by many a sandy bar,The brook shall babble down the plain,At noon or when the lesser wainIs twisting round the polar star;
Uncared for, gird the windy grove,And flood the haunts of hern and crake;Or into silver arrows breakThe sailing moon in creek and cove;
Till from the garden and the wildA fresh association blow,And year by year the landscape growFamiliar to the stranger’s child;
As year by year the labourer tillsHis wonted glebe, or lops the glades;And year by year our memory fadesFrom all the circle of the hills.