They say you are the latest, loveliest jest
Of some transmigratory ghost,
The last embodiment, and best,
Of some small being--tell me, are you most
Yourself when most
A squirrel or jerboa?
Or rather,
Since you are tender, humorous, and wise,
Is yours the spirit of some steadier goer,
A grave, precautious donkey, whose wide eyes
See, far away, the thin ambiguous towers,
Nor miss the pebbly road nor truant flowers--
See farther,
And less painfully, than ours?
Or, as I think,
Have you, like some
Too curious spirit peering from the East,
O'erleant the ramparts or your little town
In Fairyland; and from the brink
Of The Impossible tumbled down
To where we now uneasily surmise
Your vagrant figure, trailing Sirenwise--
Strayed reveller, from some fairy banquet come
To sow sedition at our sober feast?
1915.