The butterfly

I have borrowed the beautiful poem but the picture is mine. Love to take pictures of beautiful butterflies, and very soon the weather in Norway will be warmer and butterflies will visit my garden again:)

The butterfly

I am not what I was yesterday,
God knows my name.
I am made in a smooth and beautiful way,
And full of flame.

The color of corn are my pretty wings,
My flower is blue.
I kiss its topmost pearl, it swings
And I swing too.

I dance above the tawny grass
In the sunny air,
So tantalized to have to pass
Love everywhere

O Earth, O Sky, you are mine to roam
In liberty.
I am the soul and I have no home,
Take care of me.

For double I drift through a double world
Of spirit and sense;
I and my symbol together whirled
From who knows whence?

There ’s a tiny weed, God knows what good,—
It sits in the moss.
Its wings are heavy and spotted with blood
Across and across.

I sometimes settle a moment there,
And I am so sweet,
That what it lacks of the glad and fair
I fill complete.

The little white moon was once like me;
But her wings are one.
Or perhaps they closëd together be
As she swings in the sun.

When the clovers close their three green wings
Just as I do,
I creep to the primrose heart of things,
And close mine, too.

And then wide opens the candid night,
Serene and intense;
For she has, instead of love and light,
God’s confidence.

And I watch that other butterfly,
The one-winged moon,
Till, drunk with sweets in which I lie,
I dream and swoon.

And then when I to three days grow,
I find out pain.
For swift there comes an ache,—I know
That I am twain.

And nevermore can I be one
In liberty.
O Earth, O Sky, your use in done,
Take care of me.

By Alice Archer (Sewall) James. Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.