What stays thee from the clouded noons, 5
    Thy sweetness from its proper place? 
    Can trouble live with April days,
  Or sadness in the summer moons?

  Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
    The little speedwell’s darling blue, 10
    Deep tulips dash’d with fiery dew,
  Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.

  O thou, new-year, delaying long,
    Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
    That longs to burst a frozen bud 15
  And flood a fresher throat with song.

  LXXXVI

  Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
    That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
    Of evening over brake and bloom
  And meadow, slowly breathing bare

  The round of space, and rapt below 5
    Thro’ all the dewy-tassell’d wood,
    And shadowing down the horned flood
  In ripples, fan my brows and blow

  The fever from my cheek, and sigh
    The full new life that feeds thy breath 10
    Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
  Ill brethren, let the fancy fly

  From belt to belt of crimson seas
    On leagues of odour streaming far,
    To where in yonder orient star 15
  A hundred spirits whisper “Peace.”

  CI

  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, 5
    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, 10
    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 15
  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; 20

  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.

  CXIV

  Who loves not Knowledge?  Who shall rail
    Against her beauty?  May she mix
    With men and prosper!  Who shall fix
  Her pillars?  Let her work prevail.

  But on her forehead sits a fire:  5
    She sets her forward countenance
    And leaps into the future chance,
  Submitting all things to desire.

  Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain—­
    She cannot fight the fear of death. 10
    What is she, cut from love and faith,
  But some wild Pallas from the brain