Affords the spirit-sort.
Now you see where the poet’s vision of a beautiful butterfly has been leading his imagination. The nearest approach which we can make to the act of flying, in the body, is the act of swimming. The nearest approach that we can make to the heavenly condition, mentally, is in poetry. Poetry, imagination, the pleasure of emotional expression—these represent our nearest approach to paradise. Poetry is the sea in which the soul of man can swim even as butterflies can swim in the air, or happy ghosts swim in the finer element of the infinite ether. The last three stanzas of the poem are very suggestive:
And meantime, yonder streak
Meets the horizon’s verge;
That is the land, to seek
If we tire or dread the surge:
Land the solid and safe—
To welcome again (confess!)
When, high and dry, we chafe
The body, and don the dress.