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 men whence you came.