But in my hat caught,
He soon shall be taught,
Let him laugh, let him cry,
He's my butterfly:
For I've pulled out the sting
Of the marriage ring."
It is not so easy to turn wasps to butterflies in the world of average things; but, as far as verses go, there are few of more supple sweetness than some of these. They recall the light lapse of measure found in the beautiful older germs of nursery rhyme;[1] and the seeming retributive triumph of married lovers over unmarried, of wedlock over courtship, could not well be more gracefully translated than in the "Fairy's" call to his winged and feathered "arrows"—the lover's swift birds of prey, not without beak and claw. "If they do for a minute or so darken our days, dupe our fancies, prevail upon our nerves and blood, once well married we are kings of them at least." Pull out that sting of jealous reflective egotism, and your tamed "fairy"—the love that is in a man once set right—has no point or poison left it, but only rapid grace of wing and natural charm of colour.
Throughout the "Ideas" one or two other favourite
- ↑ We may find place here for another fairy song, quaint in shape and faint in colour, but with the signet of Blake upon it; copied from a loose scrap of paper on the back of which is a pencilled sketch of Hercules throttling the serpents, whose twisted limbs make a sort of spiral cradle around and above the child's triumphant figure: an attendant, naked, falls back in terror with sharp recoil of drawn-up limbs; Alemena and Amphitryon watch the struggle in silence, he grasping her hand.
A fairy leapt upon my knee
Singing and dancing merrily;
Pins, necklaces, and such-like things,
I said, 'Thou thing of patches, rings,
