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.