The Butterfly As a butterfly weaves into a flower,

Laugh playing on its silken wings,

From silence that came before the dawn,

Breath of the earth, breathed in their wings.

Fragile twinklings—

Blossoms—and lace beneath the sun,

Sweetness and color playing free—

Would that I were a butterfly, woven

Into the dusk of a flower, all

Of me lost, web unseen in fiber of petals,

To be found again, swift and slow,

In the great shivering absence of night.

• John Gould Fletcher