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.