Binsey Poplars

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1. My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
2. Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
3. All felled, felled, are all felled;
4. Of a fresh and following folded rank
5. Not spared, not one
6. That dandled a sandalled
7. Shadow that swam or sank
8. On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
9.  
10. O if we but knew what we do
11. When we delve or hew—
12. Hack and rack the growing green!
13. Since country is so tender
14. To touch, her being só slender,
15. That, like this sleek and seeing ball
16. But a prick will make no eye at all,
17. Where we, even where we mean
18. To mend her we end her,
19. When we hew or delve:
20. After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
21. Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
22. Strokes of havoc unselve
23. The sweet especial scene,
24. Rural scene, a rural scene,
25. Sweet especial rural scene.