Who Lights The Fire?

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Title:     Who Lights The Fire?
Author: George MacDonald [More Titles by 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.

[The end]
George MacDonald's poem: Who Lights The Fire?

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