Thomas Hardy — 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.