ot much of an eater; some varieties,
indeed, do not eat at all. All the necessity for eating ended with the
life of the larva. In the same manner religion teaches that the soul
represents the changed state of man. In this life a man is only like a
caterpillar; death changes him into a chrysalis, and out of the chrysalis
issues the winged soul which does not have to trouble itself about such
matters as eating and drinking. By the word "reptile" in this verse, you
must understand caterpillar. Therefore the poet speaks of all our human
work as manifold motions making little speed; you have seen how many
motions a caterpillar must make in order to go even a little distance, and
you must have noticed the manner in which it spoils the appearance of the
plant upon which it feeds. There is here an allusion to the strange and
terrible fact, that all life--and particularly the life of man--is
maintained only by the destruction of other life. In order to live we must
kill--perhaps only plants, but in any case we must kill.

Wordsworth has several poems on butterflies, but only one of them is
really fine. It is fine, not because it suggests any deep problem, but
because with absolute simplicity it pictures the charming difference of
character in a little boy and a little girl playing together in the
fields. The poem is addressed to the butterfly.

Stay near me--do not take thy flight!
A little longer stay in sight!
Much converse do I find in thee,
Historian of my infancy!
Float near me; do not yet depart!
Dead times revive in thee:
Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart,
My father's family.

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
A very hunter did I rush
Upon the prey: with leaps and springs
I followed on from brake to bush;
But she, God love her, feared to brush
The dust from off its wings.

What we call and what looks like dust on the wings of a butterfly, English
children are now taught to know as really beautiful scales or featherlets,
but in Wordsworth's time the real structure of the insect was not so well
known as now to little people. Therefore to the boy the coloured matter
brushed from the wings would only have seemed so much dust. But the little
girl, with the instinctive tenderness of the future mother-soul in her,
dreads to touch those strangely deli