Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924. |
Part Two: Nature
VII
|
| FROM cocoon forth a butterfly | |
| As lady from her door | |
| Emerged—a summer afternoon— | |
| Repairing everywhere, | |
| |
| Without design, that I could trace, | 5 |
| Except to stray abroad | |
| On miscellaneous enterprise | |
| The clovers understood. | |
| |
| Her pretty parasol was seen | |
| Contracting in a field | 10 |
| Where men made hay, then struggling hard | |
| With an opposing cloud, | |
| |
| Where parties, phantom as herself, | |
| To Nowhere seemed to go | |
| In purposeless circumference, | 15 |
| As ’t were a tropic show. | |
| |
| And notwithstanding bee that worked, | |
| And flower that zealous blew, | |
| This audience of idleness | |
| Disdained them, from the sky, | 20 |
| |
| Till sundown crept, a steady tide, | |
| And men that made the hay, | |
| And afternoon, and butterfly, | |
| Extinguished in its sea. | |
|
|
