Butterflies

Butterflies serve as a vivid example in a poem about Nature’s law of metamorphosis: their transformation from grub to winged insect makes change legible as a sequence of forms, culminating in beauty marked by the image of death.

Appearance and Transformation

The poem traces growth from egg to simple grub and then to an encased form, where the body shrinks in some parts while putting forth in others. The process culminates when the insect splits its casing and disgorges its tattered silk; it trembles, stiffens, and finally takes the air. Transformation is presented not as a single instant but as a succession of bodily changes, each preparing the next.

The newly emerged butterflies are described through contrasting patterns and colors: tawny, sapphire blue, peacock-eyed, tiger-barred, or marked between the wings with a dark, eyeless death’s head. Their beauty is varied rather than uniform, and its ornament includes a sign of mortality. The winged form thus holds splendor and death together.

Observation and Natural Law

The speaker groups butterflies with ants, beetles, and bees, saying that the successive forms of these creatures disclose Nature’s law. Their development offers a visible pattern of growth, linking the small, enclosed grub to the insect that opens its wings. Butterflies matter not only as striking creatures but as evidence through which a larger account of transformation can be discerned.

The poem’s attention to the crystal circle of the lens and to the speaker’s enlarged, horny thumbs places this recognition within the scene of magnified observation. The instrument brings the insect close, while the observer’s own hands seem elephantine beside it. That contrast underscores the scale of the encounter: a minute body becomes the focus through which an expansive natural pattern comes into view.

Significance

Butterflies embody the poem’s idea that Nature remains constant through metamorphosis. Their identity is expressed through change, from egg and grub to a winged form, rather than through an unchanging appearance. The death’s-head marking complicates the spectacle of emergence, making the final form beautiful without separating it from mortality.