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.