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.