Demeter, and Other Poems

To Professor Jebb,

With the Following Poem.

Alfred Tennyson

FAIR THINGS are slow to fade away,
Bear witness you, that yesterday1
    From out the Ghost of Pindar inyou
Roll’d an Olympian; and they say2

That here the torpid mummy wheat
Of Egypt bore a grain as sweet
    As that which gilds the glebe of England,
Sunn’d with a summer of milder heat.

So may this legend for awhile,
If greeted by your classic smile,
    Tho’ dead in its Trinacrian Enna,
Blossom again on a colder isle.

1.    in Bologna    [back]

2.    They say, for the factis doubtful    [back]

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