Sunned in the South, and here to-day; <br /> --If all organic things <br />Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say, <br /> What are your ponderings? <br /> <br />How can you stay, nor vanish quite <br /> From this bleak spot of thorn, <br />And birch, and fir, and frozen white <br /> Expanse of the forlorn? <br /> <br />Frail luckless exiles hither brought! <br /> Your dust will not regain <br />Old sunny haunts of Classic thought <br /> When you shall waste and wane; <br /> <br />But mix with alien earth, be lit <br /> With frigid Boreal flame, <br />And not a sign remain in it <br /> To tell men whence you came.<br /><br />Thomas Hardy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-flowers-from-italy-in-winter/
