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.