Poem by Thomas Hardy

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 man whence you came.

1. The Aërolite
2. Genitrix Laesa
3. V.R. 1819–1901
4. Song from Heine
5. The Bad Example

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