Home Links Nature, the gentlest mother Will there really be a morning? At half-past three a single bird The day came slow, till five o’clock The sun just touched the morning The robin is the one From cocoon forth a butterfly Before you thought of spring Whose are the little beds, I asked Pigmy seraphs gone astray To hear an oriole sing One of the ones that Midas touched

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 was 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 ’t were 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 its sea.