Butterflies

27 August, 2009 13:14:00

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Roses red and roses white
Plucked I for my love's delight.

Rudyard Kipling

Eyes aloft, over dangerous places,

The children follow the butterflies,

And, in the sweat of their upturned faces,

Slash with a net at the empty skies.

So it goes they fall amid brambles,

And sting their toes on the nettle-tops,

Till, after a thousand scratches and scrambles,

They wipe their brows and the hunting stops.

Then to quiet them comes their father

And stills the riot of pain and grief,

Saying, 'Little ones, go and gather

Out of my garden a cabbage-leaf.

'You will find on it whorls and clots of

Dull grey eggs that, properly fed,

Turn, by way of the worm, to lots of

Glorious butterflies raised from the dead...,'

'Heaven is beautiful, Earth is ugly,'

The three-dimensioned preacher saith,

So we must not look where the snail and the slug lie

For Psyche's birth.... And that is our death!

Blue Roses

Roses red and roses white

Plucked I for my love's delight.

She would none of all my posies

Bade me gather her blue roses.

Half the world I wandered through,

Seeking where such flowers grew;

Half the world unto my quest

Answered me with laugh and jest.

Home I came at wintertide,

But my silly love had died,

Seeking with her latest breath

Roses from the arms of Death.

It may be beyond the grave

She shall find what she would have.

Mine was but an idle quest

Roses white and red are best.

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