Thomas Hardy - He Revisits His First School lyrics

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 gla** 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.