TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER

Sunned in the South, and here to-day;

— If all organic things

Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,

What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite

From this bleak spot of thorn,

And birch, and fir, and frozen white

Expanse of the forlorn?

Frail luckless exiles hither brought!

Your dust will not regain

Old sunny haunts of Classic thought

When you shall waste and wane;

But mix with alien earth, be lit

With frigid Boreal flame,

And not a sign remain in it

To tell men whence you came.