For thou wert born when the earth was clad With her robe of buds and flowers, And didst float about with a soul as glad As a bird in the sunny showers; And the hour of thy death had a sweet repose, Like a melody, sweetest at its close. Nor too brief the date of thy cheerful race-- ’Tis its use that measures time-- And the mighty Spirit that fills all space With His life and His will sublime, May see that the May-fly and the Man Each flutter out the same small span; And the fly that is born with the sinking sun, To die ere the midnight hour, May have deeper joy, ere his course be run, Than man in his pride and power; And the insect’s minutes be spared the fears And the anxious doubts of our threescore years. The years and the minutes are as one-- The fly drops in his twilight mirth, And the man, when his long day’s work is done, Crawls to the self-same earth. Great Father of each! may _our_ mortal day Be the prelude to an endless May[130]! [130] “See,” exclaims Linnæus, “the large, elegant painted wings of the butterfly, four in number, covered with delicate feathery scales! With these it sustains itself in the air a whole day, rivalling the flight of birds and the brilliancy of the peacock. Consider this insect through the wonderful progress of its life,--how different is the first period of its being from the second, and both from the parent insect! Its changes are an inexplicable enigma to us: we see a green caterpillar, furnished with sixteen feet, feeding upon the leaves of a plant; this is changed into a chrysalis, smooth, of golden lustre, hanging suspended to a fixed point, without feet, and subsisting without food; this insect again undergoes another transformation, acquires wings, and six feet, and becomes a gay butterfly, sporting in the air, and living by suction upon the honey of plants. What has Nature produced more worthy of our admiration than such an animal coming upon the stage of the world, and playing its part there under so many different masks?” The ancients were so struck with the transformations of the butterfly, and its revival from a seeming temporary death, as to have considered it an emblem of the soul, the Greek word _psyche_ signifying both the soul and a butterfly; and it is for this reason that we find the butterfly introduced into their allegorical sculptures as an emblem of immortality. Trifling, therefore, and perhaps contemptible, as to the unthinking may seem the study of a butterfly, yet when we consider the art and mechanism displayed in so minute a structure,--the fluids circulating in vessels so small as almost to escape the sight--the beauty of the wings and covering--and the manner in which each part is adapted for its peculiar