Who Lights The Fire?
By George MacDonald
Who lights the fire--that forth so gracefully
And freely frolicketh the fairy smoke?
Some pretty one who never felt the yoke--
Glad girl, or maiden more sedate than she.
Pedant it cannot, villain cannot be!
Some genius, may-be, his own symbol woke;
But puritan, nor rogue in virtue's cloke,
Nor kitchen-maid has done it certainly!
Ha, ha! you cannot find the lighter out
For all the blue smoke's pantomimic gesture--
His name or nature, sex or age or vesture!
The fire was lit by human care, no doubt--
But now the smoke is Nature's tributary,
Dancing 'twixt man and nothing like a fairy.