Night-Butterflies and Day- Moths. 1 8 7 



Endymion to strange and sweet adventure. But what real 

 butterfly Shenstone had before him which he describes as 

 " celestial crimson dropped with gold " it would puzzle the 

 naturalist to say, or what the very common insect of poetry 

 can be that has " wings of gold." " Gaudy, spangled wing," 

 " painted and spangled," might apply to the fritillaries, but 

 poets are too inaccurate as observers to have noticed the 

 under side of these species' wings. Yet Darwin, who was a 

 student of nature, has "silver" butterflies; while Wordsworth, 

 who takes such credit to himself for communing in intimacy 

 with nature, actually says he saw English boys chasing a 

 "crimson " butterfly, and describes another "all green and 

 gold" two insects which it is perfectly certain he could 

 never have beheld in Great Britain. Yet he tells us that he 

 watched a single butterfly "a full half-hour," and that as a 

 child 



" My sister Emmeline and I 

 Together chased the butterfly ; " 



so that he ought to have known them by sight at any rate, 

 and to have remembered that "sister Emmeline and I" 

 never saw either a crimson or a green-and-gold butterfly. 



They are "flying flowers," as the Chinese (or is it the 

 Japanese?) call them : 



" One might fancy the rich flowers 

 That round them in the sun lay sighing 

 Had been by magic all set flying." 



Summer comes on butterfly wings ; Pleasure is a butterfly : 

 Youth "on its insect- wing " flies, " eager to taste the honey's 

 spring." Keats beautifully calls them "lords of flowers." 

 In Byron the butterfly affords an analogy for beauty wooed, 

 won, and thrown aside : 



" So beauty lures the full-grown child, 

 With hue as bright and wing as wild, 

 A chase of idle hopes and fears, 

 Begun in folly, closed in tears. 



