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.