So wonderful, so wide,
So sun-suffused, were things
Like soul and nought beside.
So much for the conditions of the poet’s revery. He is swimming in the sea; above his face, only a few inches away, the beautiful butterfly is hovering. Its apparition makes him think of many things—perhaps first about the dangerous position of the butterfly, for if it should only touch the water, it is certain to be drowned. But it does not touch the water; and he begins to think how clumsy is the man who moves in water compared with the insect that moves in air, and how ugly a man is by comparison with the exquisite creature which the Greeks likened to the soul or ghost of the man. Thinking about ghosts leads him at once to the memory of a certain very dear ghost about which he forthwith begins to dream.
What if a certain soul
Which early slipped its sheath,
And has for its home the whole
Of heaven, thus look beneath,
Thus watch one who, in the world,
Both lives and likes life’s way,