what do tokens refer to in the poem animals?

The token that the poet says he might have dropped long ago, and which the animals have kept for him, is his true nature as a human. While humans came close to civilisation, they gradually moved away from their true nature. The natural instincts that humans had and the innocence with which they lived and helped each other have been left behind somewhere. As they got near civilisation, they chose to leave behind the virtues of kindness, sincerity, unselfishness, joy, satisfaction, respectability, and sharing. They took to vices such as greed, selfishness, possessiveness, and other such material characteristics. Animals have carried forward the real instincts and characteristics, which the poet looks at and tries to remember where he had negligently lost his true nature.