“The angler’s May-fly, the most short-lived in its perfect state of any of the insect race, emerges from the water, where it passes its aurelia state, about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night.”—White’s Selborne.
The sun of the eve was warm and bright
When the May-fly burst his shell,
And he wanton’d awhile in that fair light
O’er the river’s gentle swell;
And the deepening tints of the crimson sky
Still gleam’d on the wing of the glad May-fly.
The colors of sunset pass’d away,
The crimson and yellow green,
And the evening-star’s first twinkling ray