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.