As the Emperor Moth[1] sat one evening in May,
Fanned by numberless wings in the moon’s silver ray,
[p6]
While around him the zephyrs breathed sweetest perfume,
Thus he spoke to his dwarf with the Ragged white plume:[2]
“That vain Butterfly’s Ball, I hear, was most splendid,
And, as the world says, very fully attended,
Though she never asked us, but assigned as a cause,
We were all much too heavy to gallope and waltz.
What impertinence this, want of grace to ascribe