BUTTERCUP
Ranunculus
The royal kingcup bold
Dares not don his coat of gold.
He likes the poor things of the world the best,
I would not, therefore, if I could be rich.
It pleases him to stoop for buttercups.
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower.
The buttercups, bright-eyed and bold,
Held up their chalices of gold
To catch the sunshine and the dew.
Fair is the kingcup that in meadow blows,
Fair is the daisy that beside her grows.
Against her ankles as she trod
The lucky buttercups did nod.
And O the buttercups! that field
O' the cloth of gold, where pennons swam—
Where France set up his lilied shield,
His oriflamb,
And Henry's lion-standard rolled:
What was it to their matchless sheen,
Their million million drops of gold
Among the green!
The buttercups across the field
Made sunshine rifts of splendor.
When buttercups are blossoming,
The poets sang, 'tis best to wed:
So all for love we paired in Spring—
Blanche and I—ere youth had sped.
BUTTERFLY
I'd be a butterfly, born in a bower,
Where roses and lilies and violets meet.
Thomas Haynes Bayly—Td he a Butterfly.
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| text = <poem>Gray sail against the sky,
Gray butterfly!
Have you a dream for going.
Or are you only the blind wind's blowing?
Dana Burnet—A Sail at Twilight.
With the rose the butterfly's deep in love,
A thousand times hovering round;
But round himself, all tender like gold,
The sun's sweet ray is hovering found.
Heine—Book of Songs. New Spring. No. 7.
Far out at sea,—the sun was high,
While veer'd the wind and flapped the sail,
We saw a snow-white butterfly
Dancing before the fitful gale,
Far out at sea.
Richard Hengist Horne—Genius.
The gold-barr'd butterflies to and fro
And over the waterside wander*d and wove
As heedless and idle as clouds that rove
And drift by the peaks of perpetual snow.
Joaquin Miller—Songs of the Sun-Lands. Isles of the Amazons. Pt. III. St. 41.
And many an ante-natal tomb
Where butterflies dream of the life to come.
Much converse do I find in thee,
Historian of my infancy!
Float near me; do not yet depart!
Dead times revive in thee:
Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart.
CALMNESS
O haste to shed the sovereign balm—
My shattered nerves new string:
And for my guest serenely calm,
The nymph Indifference bring.
How calm, how beautiful comes on
The stilly hour, when storms are gone!
When warring winds have died away,
And clouds, beneath the glancing ray,
Melt off, and leave the land and sea
Sleeping in bright tranquillity!
'Tis Noon;—a calm, unbroken sleep
Is on the blue waves of the deep;
A soft haze, like a fairy dream,
Is floating over wood and stream;
And many a broad magnolia flower,
Within its shadowy woodland bower,
Is gleaming like a lovely star.
The noonday quiet holds the hill.
Pure was the temperate Air, an even Calm
Perpetual reign'd, save what the Zephyrs bland
Breath'd o'er the blue expanse.
