Watching, in trance nor dark nor clear,
Th’ appalling Future as it nearer draws;
His spirit calm’d the storm to meet,
Feeling the Rock beneath his feet,
And tracing through the cloud th’ eternal Cause.
John Keble.
XIV.
The Butterfly.
The “Fate of the Butterfly” is one of the most charming of Spenser’s lesser poems; and as it is seldom met with on American bookshelves, it has been inserted entire, or at least with the exception of a verse or two, in the present volume.
Familiar as we are with them, we seldom bear in mind how much the more pleasing varieties of the insect race add to the beauty and interest of the earth. Setting aside the important question of their different uses, and the appropriate tasks allotted to each—forgetting for the moment what we owe to the bee, and the silkworm, and the coral insect, with others of the same class—we are very apt to underrate them even as regards the pleasure and gratification they afford us. The utter absence of insect life is one of the most striking characteristics of our Northern American winters. Let us suppose for a moment that something of the same kind were to mark one single summer of our lives—that the hum of the bee, the drone of the beetle, the chirrup of cricket, locust, and katydid, the noiseless flight of gnat, moth, and butterfly, and the flash of the firefly, were suddenly to cease from the days and nights of June—suppose a magic sleep to fall upon them all; let their tiny but wonderful forms vanish from their usual haunts; let their ceaseless, cheery chant of day and night be hushed, should we not be oppressed with the strange stillness? Should we not look wistfully about for more than one familiar creature? The gardens and the meadows would in very sooth scarce seem themselves without this lesser world of insect life, moving in busy, gay, unobtrusive variety among the plants they love; and we may well believe that we should gladly welcome back the lowliest of the beetles, and the most humble of the moths which have so often crossed our path.