Poem by Alfred Noyes

Butterflies

    Sun-child, as you watched the rain
            Beat the pane,
    Saw the garden of your dreams
      Where the clove carnation grows
            And the rose
    Veiled with shimmering shades and gleams,
    Mirrored colours, mystic gleams,
              Fairy dreams,
    Drifting in your radiant eyes
      Half in earnest asked, that day,
              Half in play,
    Where were all the butterflies?

    Where were all the butterflies
              When the skies
    Clouded and their bowers of clover
      Bowed beneath the golden shower?
              Every flower
    Shook and the rose was brimming over.

    Ah, the dog-rose trembling over
              Thyme and clover,
    How it glitters in the sun,
      Now the hare-bells lift again
              Bright with rain
    After all the showers are done!

    See, when all the showers are done,
              How the sun
    Softly smiling o'er the scene
      Bids the white wings come and go
              To and fro
    Through the maze of gold and green.

    Magic webs of gold and green
              Rainbow sheen
    Mesh the maze of flower and fern,
      Cuckoo-grass and meadow-sweet,
              And the wheat
    Where the crimson poppies burn.

    Ay; and where the poppies burn,
              They return
    All across the dreamy downs,
      Little wings that flutter and beat
              O'er the sweet
    Bluffs the purple clover crowns.

    Where the fairy clover crowns
              Dreamy downs,
    And amidst the golden grass
      Buttercups and daisies blow
              To and fro
    When the shadowy billows pass;

    Time has watched them pause and pass
              Where Love was;
    Ah, what fairy butterflies,
      Little wild incarnate blisses,
              Coloured kisses,
    Floating under azure skies!

    Under those eternal skies
              See, they rise:
    Mottled wings of moony sheen,
      Wings in whitest star-shine dipped,
              Orange tipped,
    Eyed with black and veined with green.

    They were fairies plumed with green
              Rainbow-sheen
    Ere Time bade their host begone
      From that palace built of roses
              Which still dozes
    In the greenwood all alone.

    In the greenwood all alone
              And unknown:
    Now they roam these mortal dells
      Wondering where that happy glade is,
              Painted Ladies,
    Admirals, and Tortoise-shells,

    O, Fritillaries, Admirals,
              Tortoise-shells;
    You, like fragments of the skies
      Fringed with Autumn's richest hues,
              Dainty blues
    Patterned with mosaic dyes;
    Oh, and you whose peacock dyes
              Gleam with eyes;
    You, whose wings of burnished copper
      Burn upon the sunburnt brae
              Where all day
    Whirrs the hot and grey grasshopper;

    While the grey grasshopper whirrs
              In the furze,
    You that with your sulphur wings
      Melt into the gold perfume
              Of the broom
    Where the linnet sits and sings;

    You that, as a poet sings,
              On your wings
    Image forth the dreams of earth,
      Quickening them in form and hue
              To the new
    Glory of a brighter birth;

    You that bring to a brighter birth
              Dust and earth,
    Rapt to glory on your wings,
      All transfigured in the white
              Living light
    Shed from out the soul of things;

    Heralds of the soul of things,
              You whose wings
    Carry heaven through every glade;
      Thus transfigured from the petals
              Death unsettles,
    Little souls of leaf and blade;

    You that mimic bud and blade,
              Light and shade;
    Tinted souls of leaf and stone,
      Flower and sunny bank of sand,
              Fairyland
    Calls her children to their own;
    Calls them back into their own
              Great unknown;
    Where the harmonies they cull
      On their wings are made complete
              As they beat
    Through the Gate called Beautiful.

1. The Escape of the Old Grey Squirrel
2. Necromancy
3. Song of the Wooden-Legged Fiddler
4. Earth-Bound
5. Fishers of Men

Rudyard Kipling Butterflies ("Eyes aloft, over dangerous places")

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