Poetry Friday: From Cocoon Forth a Butterfly

Did you know today is Butterfly Day? Emily Dickinson, herself elusive as a butterfly, wrote many poems about these awe-inspiring insects. This is one of my favorites.

From Cocoon Forth a Butterfly (354)
by Emily Dickinson

From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged—a Summer Afternoon—
Repairing Everywhere—

Without Design—that I could trace
Except to stray abroad
On Miscellaneous Enterprise
The Clovers—understood—

Her pretty Parasol be seen
Contracting in a Field
Where Men made Hay—
Then struggling hard
With an opposing Cloud—

Where Parties—Phantom as Herself—
To Nowhere—seemed to go
In purposeless Circumference—
As ’twere a Tropic Show—

And notwithstanding Bee—that worked—
And Flower—that zealous blew—
This Audience of Idleness
Disdained them, from the Sky—

Till Sundown crept—a steady Tide—
And Men that made the Hay—
And Afternoon—and Butterfly—
Extinguished—in the Sea—

Jan van Kessel the Elder [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Please be sure to visit A Year of Reading, where Mary Lee has the Poetry Friday Roundup.