cate wings; she fears, not only to
spoil, but also to hurt.

Deeper thoughts than memory may still be suggested to English poets by the
sight of a butterfly, and probably will be for hundreds of years to come.
Perhaps the best poem of a half-metaphorical, half-philosophical thought
about butterflies is the beautiful prologue to Browning's "Fifine at the
Fair," which prologue is curiously entitled "Amphibian"--implying that we
are about to have a reference to creatures capable of living in two
distinctive elements, yet absolutely belonging neither to the one nor to
the other. The poet swims out far into the sea on a beautiful day; and,
suddenly, looking up, perceives a beautiful butterfly flying over his
head, as if watching him. The sight of the insect at once suggests to him
its relation to Greek fancy as a name for the soul; then he begins to
wonder whether it might not really be the soul, or be the symbol of the
soul, of a dead woman who loved him. From that point of the poem begins a
little metaphysical fantasy about the possible condition of souls.

The fancy I had to-day,
Fancy which turned a fear!
I swam far out in the bay,
Since waves laughed warm and clear.

I lay and looked at the sun,
The noon-sun looked at me:
Between us two, no one
Live creature, that I could see.

Yes! There came floating by
Me, who lay floating too,
Such a strange butterfly!
Creature as dear as new:

Because the membraned wings
So wonderful, so wide,
So sun-suffused, were things
Like soul and nought beside.

So much for the conditions of the poet's revery. He is swimming in the
sea; above his face, only a few inches away, the beautiful butterfly is
hovering. Its apparition makes him think of many things--perhaps first
about the dangerous position of the butterfly, for if it should only touch
the water, it is certain to be drowned. But it does not touch the water;
and he begins to think how clumsy is the man who moves in water compared
with the insect that moves in air, and how ugly a man is by comparison
with the exquisite creature which the Greeks likened to the soul or ghost
of the man. Thinking about ghosts leads him at once to the memory of a
certain very dear ghost about which he forthwith begins to dream.

What if a certain soul
Which early slipped its sheath,
And has for its home the whole
Of heaven, thus look beneath,

Thus watch one who, in the world,
Both lives and li