“Go then, dear flowers,” said the fairies. “But you must promise that you will return to your stalks before the sun goes down.”
“We promise,” called out the flowers as they flew away, red, yellow, and white, over the grass, out of the garden to the great wide meadow beyond. The fairies’ garden seemed, suddenly, to have taken wings.
As the sun began to set the flowers flew quietly back to their stalks, and when the fairies came, they found each flower again in its place.
“Well done, well done!” exclaimed the fairies. “To-morrow you may fly away again to the meadows.”
As the sun rose the next morning there was a flutter of red and yellow and white as, from every stalk, a pair of coloured wings rose and flapped, then took flight once more over the meadows and fields. And by and by a day came when the petals of the flowers became wings—real wings, for the flowers themselves had become beautiful butterflies—red, yellow and white.
WHITE BUTTERFLIES
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Fly, white butterflies, out to sea,
Frail, pale wings for the wind to try,