Impressionistic Painting of "Ode to a Butterfly"

 Dr Abe V Rotor 

  

  

Butterfly Impression in acrylic painting by the author, 2021.  

On display at San Vicente Botanical Garden, San Vicente Ilocos Sur

Ode to a Butterfly

 Thomas Wentworth Higginson

      (1823-1911)

Thou spark of life, that wavest wings of gold!

Thou songless wanderer mid the songful birds!

With nature's secrets in thy tints unrolled

Through gorgeous cipher, past the reach of words,

     Yet dear to every child

     In glad pursuit beguiled,

Living his unspoiled days mid flowers and flocks and herds

Thou winged blossom! liberated thing!

What secret tie binds thee to other flowers

Still held within the garden's fostering?

Will they too soar with the completed hours,

     Take flight and be like thee

     Irrevocably free,

Hovering at will o'er their parental bowers?

Or is thy luster drawn from heavenly hues,

A sumptuous drifting fragment of the sky

With sudden splendor; and the tree-tops high

     Grasp that swift blazonry,

     Then lend those tints to thee - 

On thee to float a few short hours, and die?

Birds have their nests; they rear their eager young

And flit on errands all the livelong day;

Each fieldmouse keeps the homestead whence it sprung;

But thou art nature's freeman, - free to stray

     Unfettered through the wood

     Seeking thine airy food,

The sweetness spiced on every blossomed spray.

The garden one wide banquet spreads for thee,

O daintiest reveler of the joyous earth!

One drop of honey gives satiety,

A second draught would drug thee past all mirth.

     Thy feast no orgy shows,

     Thy calm eyes never close,

Thou soberest sprite to which the sun gives birth!

And yet the soul of man upon thy wings

Forever soars in aspiration; thou

His emblem of the new career that springs

When death's arrest bids all his spirit bow.

     He seeks his hope in thee

     Of immortality.

Symbol of life! me with such faith endow.

*Ode to a Butterfly is a beautiful lyric poem addressed to a butterfly, but revealing the author's amazement at its beauty and freedom. One has to pause at the phrase, "But thou art nature's freeman, - free to stray."  These are the words of a careful observer of Nature and those of an abolitionist seeking analogies. Higginson fought for the abolition of slavery during the American Civil war.