Explore "Who Lights the Fire?" by George MacDonald on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.