Unwatched and unloved will the flowers in the garden bloom with their fragrance, although the family be gone: and the trees will put forth, and afterwards shed their foliage. The rose-carnation, too, will
“feed
With summer-spice the humming air,”
in which the bees are busy.
Uncared for, the brook will babble
“At noon, or when the lesser wain[72]
Is twisting round the polar star;”—
also when the sailing moon’s reflection in the water becomes broken into silver arrows.[73]
All this will go on, until garden and wild become familiar to the succeeding stranger:
“And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.”
Future generations will nevertheless visit Somersby, with something of the reverence that still attracts the stranger to Stratford-on-Avon.
CII.