He revisits his First School

I should not have shown in the flesh,
I ought to have gone as a ghost;
It was awkward, unseemly almost,
Standing solidly there as when fresh,
   Pink, tiny, crisp-curled,
   My pinions yet furled
   From the winds of the world.



After waiting so many a year
To wait longer, and go as a sprite
From the tomb at the mid of some night
Was the right, radiant way to appear;
   Not as one wanzing weak
   From life's roar and reek,
   His rest still to seek:
Yea, beglimpsed through the quaint quarried glass
Of green moonlight, by me greener made,
When they'd cry, perhaps, "There sits his shade
In his olden haunt--just as he was
   When in Walkingame he
   Conned the grand Rule-of-Three
   With the bent of a bee."
But to show in the afternoon sun,
With an aspect of hollow-eyed care,
When none wished to see me come there,
Was a garish thing, better undone.
   Yes; wrong was the way;
   But yet, let me say,
   I may right it--some day.