58 Life and Love. 



To man one vision of God is worth aeons of 

 unhallowed life ; one great thrill of inspiration, 

 of knowledge, is worth years of sordid common 

 sensation. 



And is not the butterfly too, in its glorified state, 

 animated by the same transcendent joy of life, of 

 nearness to the Infinite, that make its few final 

 hours of life and love count as ages of less exalted 

 existence? 



But now for the end, for close upon life is death ; 

 love is to end in oblivion ; or is this transforma- 

 tion, death, but another pupa form, in which the 

 crude earth vestment falls away from some finer 

 essence of being? 



Egg, larva, pupa; through these lowly forms 

 the butterfly has passed, finally to merge resplen- 

 dent as Imago, the image of the species ! 



In this transfigured form love thrills the winged 

 creatures, and to love they now give up their lives. 

 They approach each other; in rapid flight through 

 the air they meet, they embrace ; a brief period 

 of this marvellous love-flight crowns their winged 

 life, and then the drama of earth has been played 

 to the end. 



In them life culminates in love ; there is no be- 

 yond but that other strange life, that new meta- 

 morphosis which man calls death. 



In those brief moments of supremest love is 

 exhausted the whole reservoir of physical strength 

 which the creature has so laboriously accumulated- 



