y was quite enough, not only to make Browning's mind
think very seriously, but to make that mind teach us the truth and
seriousness which may attach to very small things--incidents, happenings
of daily life, in any hour and place. I believe that is the greatest
English poem we have on the subject of the butterfly.

The idea that a butterfly might be, not merely the symbol of the soul, but
in very fact the spirit of a dead person, is somewhat foreign to English
thought; and whatever exists in poetry on the subject must necessarily be
quite new. The idea of a relation between insects, birds, or other living
creatures, and the spirits of the dead, is enormously old in Oriental
literature;--we find it in Sanskrit texts thousands of years ago. But the
Western mind has not been accustomed to think of spiritual life as outside
of man; and much of natural poetry has consequently remained undeveloped
in Western countries. A strange little poem, "The White Moth," is an
exception to the general rule that I have indicated; but I am almost
certain that its author, A.T. Quiller-Couch, must have read Oriental
books, or obtained his fancy from some Eastern source. As the knowledge of
Indian literature becomes more general in England, we may expect to find
poetry much influenced by Oriental ideas. At the present time, such a
composition as this is quite a strange anomaly.

_If a leaf rustled, she would start:
And yet she died, a year ago.
How had so frail a thing the heart
To journey where she trembled so?
And do they turn and turn in fright,
Those little feet, in so much night?_

The light above the poet's head
Streamed on the page and on the cloth,
And twice and thrice there buffeted
On the black pane a white-winged moth:
'Twas Annie's soul that beat outside,
And "Open, open, open!" cried:

"I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned--
I was bewildered and I turned.

"Oh, it was easy then! I knew
Your window and no star beside.
Look up and take me back to you!"
--He rose and thrust the window wide.
'Twas but because his brain was hot
With rhyming; for he heard her not.

But poets polishing a phrase
Show anger over trivial things;
And as she blundered in the blaze
Towards him, on ecstatic wings,
He raised a hand and smote her dead;
The