And who shall say that his thread of years
Is a life more blest than thine!
Has his feverish dream of doubts and fears
Such joys as those which shine
In the constant pleasures of thy way,
Most happy child of the happy May?
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[1]!
*
- ↑ "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
