oy of the light itself.

"Like a butterfly I take up from the hearts of the flowers that pure water
which the night lets fall into them like tears. I am inspired only by the
almighty sun. Socrates listened to me; Virgil made mention of me. I am the
insect especially beloved by the poets and by the bards. The ardent sun
reflects himself in the globes of my eyes. My ruddy bed, which seems to be
powdered like the surface of fine ripe fruit, resembles some exquisite
key-board of silver and gold, all quivering with music. My four wings,
with their delicate net-work of nerves, allow the bright down upon my
black back to be seen through their transparency. And like a star upon the
forehead of some divinely inspired poet, three exquisitely mounted rubies
glitter upon my head."

These are fair examples of the French manner of treating the interesting
subject of insects in poetry. If you should ask me whether the French
poets are better than the English, I should answer, "In point of feeling,
no." The real value of such examples to the student should be emotional,
not descriptive. I think that the Japanese poems on insects, though not
comparable in point of mere form with some of the foreign poems which I
have quoted, are better in another way--they come nearer to the true
essence of poetry. For the Japanese poets have taken the subject of
insects chiefly for the purpose of suggesting human emotion; and that is
certainly the way in which such a subject should be used. Remember that
this is an age in which we are beginning to learn things about insects
which could not have been even imagined fifty years ago, and the more that
we learn about these miraculous creatures, the more difficult does it
become for us to write poetically about their lives, or about their
possible ways of thinking and feeling. Probably no mortal man will ever be
able to imagine how insects think or feel or hear or even see. Not only
are their senses totally different from those of animals, but they appear
to have a variety of special senses about which we can not know anything
at all. As for their existence, it is full of facts so atrocious and so
horrible as to realize most of the imaginations of old about the torments
of hell. Now, for these reasons to make an insect speak in poetry--to put
one's thoughts, so to speak, into the mouth of an insect--is no longer
consistent with poetical good judgment. No; we must think of insects
either in relation to the my