II
O Beauty, why so sad my heart?
Why stirs in me a nameless pain
Which seems like some remembered strain,
As on this product of thine art
Enraptured, marvelling I gaze,
And note how airily 'tis wrought—
A wingèd dream, a bodied thought,
The spirit of the summer days?
Thy beauty opes, O Butterfly,
The doors of being, with subtle sense
Of Beauty's frail impermanence,
And grief of knowing it must die.
Again I seem to know the tears
Of other lives, the woe and pain
Of days that died; resurgent wane
The moons of countless bygone years.