kes life's way,
Nor wishes the wings unfurled
That sleep in the worm, they say?

But sometimes when the weather
Is blue, and warm waves tempt
To free oneself of tether,
And try a life exempt

From worldly noise and dust,
In the sphere which overbrims
With passion and thought,--why, just
Unable to fly, one swims!

This is better understood by paraphrase: "I wonder if the soul of a
certain person, who lately died, slipped so gently out of the hard sheath
of the perishable body--I wonder if she does not look down from her home
in the sky upon me, just as that little butterfly is doing at this moment.
And I wonder if she laughs at the clumsiness of this poor swimmer, who
finds it so much labour even to move through the water, while she can move
through whatever she pleases by the simple act of wishing. And this man,
strangely enough, does not want to die, and to become a ghost. He likes to
live very much; he does not yet desire those soul-wings which are supposed
to be growing within the shell of his body, just as the wings of the
butterfly begin to grow in the chrysalis. He does not want to die at all.
But sometimes he wants to get away from the struggle and the dust of the
city, and to be alone with nature; and then, in order to be perfectly
alone, he swims. He would like to fly much better; but he can not.
However, swimming is very much like flying, only the element of water is
thicker than air."

However, more than the poet's words is suggested here. We are really told
that what a fine mind desires is spiritual life, pure intellectual
life--free from all the trammels of bodily necessity. Is not the swimmer
really a symbol of the superior mind in its present condition? Your best
swimmer can not live under the water, neither can he rise into the
beautiful blue air. He can only keep his head in the air; his body must
remain in the grosser element. Well, a great thinker and poet is ever
thus--floating between the universe of spirit and the universe of matter.
By his mind he belongs to the region of pure mind,--the ethereal state;
but the hard necessity of living keeps him down in the world of sense and
grossness and struggle. On the other hand the butterfly, freely moving in
a finer element, better represents the state of spirit or soul.

What is the use of being dissatisfied with nature? The best we can do is
to enjoy in the imagination those things which it is not possible for us
to enjoy in f