#WingedWordsWindsday: 04/13/2022 -- Butterfly Poems!

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 24: April 13, 2022

 

 

Butterfly Poems!

 

“To a Butterfly” (1801)

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

 

I’ve watched you now a full half-hour;

Self-poised upon that yellow flower

And, little Butterfly! Indeed

I know not if you sleep or feed.

How motionless! – not frozen seas

More motionless! And then

What joy awaits you, when the breeze

Hath found you out among the trees,

And calls you forth again!

This plot of orchard-ground is ours;

My trees they are, my Sister’s flowers;

Here rest your wings when they are weary;

Here lodge as in a sanctuary!

Come often to us, fear no wrong;

Sit near us on the bough!

We’ll talk of sunshine and of song,

And summer days, when we were young;

Sweet childish days, that were as long

As twenty days are now.

 

*                                              *                                              *

 

Stay near me – do not take thy flight!

A little longer stay in sight!

Much converse do I find in thee,

Historian of my infancy!

Float near me; do not yet depart!

Dead times revive in thee:

Thou brings, gay creature as thou art!

A solemn image to my heart,

My father’s family!

Oh! Pleasant, pleasant were the days,

The time, when, in our childish plays,

My sister Emmeline and I

Together chased the butterfly!

A very hunter did I rush

Upon the prey: -- with leaps and springs

I followed on from brake to bush;

But she, God love her, feared to brush

The dust from off its wings.

 

“Ode to a Butterfly”

By Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911)

 

Thou spark of life that wavest wings of gold,

Thou songless wanderer mid the songful birds,

With Nature’s secrets in thy tints unrolled

Through gorgeous cipher, past the reach of words,

Yet dear to every child

In glad pursuit beguiled,

Living his unspoiled days mid flowers and flocks and herds!

 

Thou winged blossom, liberated thing,

What secret tie binds thee to other flowers,

Still held within the garden’s fostering?

Will they too soar with the completed hours,

Take flight, and be like thee

Irrevocably free,

Hovering at will o’er their parental bowers?

 

Or is thy luster drawn from heavenly hues,

A sumptuous drifting fragment of the sky,

Caught when the sunset its last glance imbues

With sudden splendor, and the tree-tops high

Grasp that swift blazonry,

Then lend those tints to thee,

On thee to float a few short hours, and die?

 

Birds have their nests; they rear their eager young,

And flit on errands all the livelong day;

Each fieldmouse keeps the homestead whence it sprung;

But thou art Nature’s freeman, free to stray

Unfettered through the wood,

Seeking thine airy food,

The sweetness spiced on every blossomed spray.

 

The garden one wide banquet spreads for thee,

O daintiest reveler of the joyous Earth!

One drop of honey gives satiety;

A second draught would drug thee past all mirth.

Thy feast no orgy shows;

Thy calm eyes never close,

Thou soberest sprite to which the Sun gives birth.

 

And yet the soul of man upon thy wings

Forever soars in aspiration; thou

His emblem of the new career that springs

When death’s arrest bids all his spirit bow.

He seeks his hope in thee

Of immortality.

Symbol of life, me with such faith endow!

 

“The Butterfly That Stamped”

By Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Excerpted from the Just So Stories (1902)

                This, O my Best Beloved, is a story — a new and a wonderful story — a story quite different from the other stories — a story about The Most Wise Sovereign Solomon Ben-David — Solomon the Son of David.

                There are three hundred and fifty-five stories about Solomon Ben-David; but this is not one of them. It is not the story of the Lapwing who found the Water; or the Hoopoe who shaded Solomon Ben-David from the heat. It is not the story of the Glass Pavement, or the Ruby with the Crooked Hole, or the Gold Bars of Balkis. It is the story of the Butterfly that Stamped.

                Now attend all over again and listen!

                Solomon Ben-David was wise. He understood what the beasts said, what the birds said, what the fishes said, and what the insects said. He understood what the rocks said deep under the earth when they bowed in towards each other and groaned; and he understood what the trees said when they rustled in the middle of the morning. He understood everything, from the bishop on the bench to the hyssop on the wall, and Balkis, his Head Queen, the Most Beautiful Queen Balkis, was nearly as wise as he was.

 

*                                              *                                              *

 

There was never a Queen like Balkis,

⁠From here to the wide world’s end;

But Balkis talked to a butterfly

⁠As you would talk to a friend.

 

There was never a King like Solomon,

⁠Not since the world began;

But Solomon talked to a butterfly

⁠As a man would talk to a man.

 

She was Queen of Sabaea,

⁠And he was Asia’s Lord,

But they both of them talked to butterflies

⁠When they took their walks abroad!

 

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was both an accomplished artist and a scientist, becoming the “founding mother” of the science of entomology. She observed, painted, and wrote illustrated reference books about pollinators – especially butterflies and moths. In later life, she participated in a scientific expedition to Suriname to catalog and study its native insect life. Image Credit: Maria as portrayed by Jacob Marrel (1679), Art Museum of Basel, Switzerland.