He Revisits His First School Thomas Hardy

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.