LORD TENNYSON

Unloved, the sunflower, shining fail,

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 j 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.

��XI

Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick

By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drown'd in yonder living blue

The lark becomes a sightless song.

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