The dim wild-carrot lifts its crumpled crest:

And over all, at slender flight or rest,

The dragon-flies, like coruscating rays

Of lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase,

Drowsily sparkle through the summer days;

And, dewlap-deep, here from the noontide heat

The bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat:

And through the willows girdling the hill,

Now far, now near, borne as the soft winds will,

Comes the low rushing of the water-mill.

[10] 

Ah, lovely to me from a little child,

How changed the place! wherein once, undefiled,

The glad communion of the sky and stream

Went with me like a presence and a dream.

Where once the brambled meads and orchardlands

Poured ripe abundance down with mellow hands

Of summer; and the birds of field and wood

Called to me in a tongue I understood;

And in the tangles of the old rail-fence

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