THE LOST THOUGHTS
Guy de Maupassant, in his last days, believed his thoughts to be fluttering about his head like many-colored butterflies. “Where are my lost thoughts? Who will tell me where to find my thoughts?” he cried to those who tended him.
See! Do you see that wondrous, winged cloud?
As if all the garden flowers had taken flight
Into the blue air for a holiday,
And left their tall green stalks beteared with dew?
They are butterflies now, but once I know
They were my thoughts. I called them when I chose;
They came to me in gentle, circling troops
Like fairies tamed by love, and poised upon
My hands, and brushed my cheeks and lips with wings
As soft as Psyche’s kisses in the dark.
There was a white one like an orient pearl
Seen in the moonlight; pure and holy as
The Virgin’s white throat in the candle shine
Of her high altar—or a young girl’s soul.
There was a girl—we two were boy and girl
And play-mate lovers. I must have caught
The white wings roughly, for they still are stained.
I do forget—but Ah! the silken-bright
Red poppy flowers that are red butterflies!
My thoughts, my thoughts, shot through with gleaming gold
And gemmed and jewelled like a Hindu queen,
Amber and emerald, ruby and topaz,
And charmful jade, and opal’s mystic fire;
And richer dyes than Tyre knew in her pride—
(My own soul broken to a thousand hues
As light upon a prism—the prism Life.)
My wingèd thoughts! My heavenly butterflies!
Now they are black, all black, with eyes of fire;
I smother in the sable of their wings
That wrap around me like a velvet pall—
I cannot see the sun for their deep eyes—
Be merciful! My butterflies! O my lost thoughts!