Queen Berengaria's Courtesy, and Other Poems By the Lady E. Stuart Wortley. In Three Vols |
 | I, II, III. |
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TO THE BUTTERFLY. |
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 | Queen Berengaria's Courtesy, and Other Poems |  |
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TO THE BUTTERFLY.
Butterfly! gladly I watch thee, now—Like an incarnate breeze art thou—
Oh! Butterfly—late in the sunny air
Borne buoyantly on, all bright and fair—
Child of the Summer!—child of the Sun!
His loveliest, lightest, and happiest one!
And now, Oh! thou free-born wanderer, now
On the stately lily's smooth snowy brow,
Dost thou in sculpture-like stillness rest,
While burns o'er its whiteness thy dazzling vest?
And soon wilt thou dart through the air again—
Flashing round thee, with many a jewel stain,
And float on the sunbeam, and swim in light,
Like an embodied thought in sight!
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Fleeting, fleeting away like a fairy gift;
And then again shalt thou rest thee calm,
On some rose's leaflets of beauty and balm?
Butterfly! thou art as restless as man,
In his narrow path, in his straightened span!
Thus doth he evermore shift his place,
And now pause—now speed, on his troubled race:
But, Oh! glad Butterfly! not like thee,
In a stream of sunshine careering free;
And not like thee, still from flower to flower,
From the sunny glade to the sunny bower—
He mourneth on—but from rock to rock,
Barren and frowning—his vain hope to mock!—
From desert to desert—from gloom to gloom,
Till he ends at length with the shadowy tomb!
| Queen Berengaria's Courtesy, and Other Poems | |