To Flowers From Italy in Winter

By Thomas Hardy

6/2/1840-1/11/1928


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.

DayPoems Poem No. 1033
<a href="http://www.daypoems.net/poems/1033.html">To Flowers From Italy in Winter by Thomas Hardy</a>

The DayPoems Poetry Collection, www.daypoems.net
Timothy Bovee, editor

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