Page:Collected poems of Flecker.djvu/54

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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

18

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