Page:Collected poems of Flecker.djvu/54

 Fragments of an Ode to Shelley

I


 * Since men have always crowned the tomb
 * With those sweet diadems of doom.
 * The twinings of memorial flowers,
 * So that their brother's first few hours
 * Of waiting in his lonely room
 * May pass in peace while Time devours
 * The body's brief and bitter bloom,
 * The last extortion of sad powers,
 * And downwards through the grudging soil
 * The piteous perfumes strain and toil,

II


 * Let the kind ritual remain:
 * We seek an emblem of our pain
 * The dry scant holly of the shore,
 * The grass upon the dunes—What more
 * Can sorrow bring? We cannot drain

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