I that am wiser than most,
Have yielded the tract of my ghost
To a panting and flat-eyed ghost who gathers these useless things.
In a country of seventeen moons,
He sits in the sound of bassoons
Playing terrible stupid tunes to the first of the ghostial kings.
He has gathered my ghost with the rest
To plough it, or do what is best,
And doubtless he does it with zest in the country whereover
he reigns.
I am glad--for the thing was a pest;
It lay at the roots of my chest,
And it darkened the East and the West and it plastered
my eyes with stains.
But heigh-ho! my arms and my feet
Now are mine as I swing down the street,
And my heart for to storm and to beat whenever my body desires.
My eyes will look when they please
Down the drains or high to the trees.
My body is mine to freeze or shrivel with whitest fires!