A butterfly lands in a poem and, within a few lines, outranks a king. That is the quiet joke of Joseph Warton's "Verses On A Butterfly," which begins as a dazzled description of an insect and ends as a sly comment on human ambition. The speaker and his companions hunt butterflies for pleasure, and the last couplet claims that everyone else, from the honour-seeker to the money-maker, is doing the same thing under grander names.
The opening loads the insect with treasure. Its wings are "bedropp'd with gold," and its colours are borrowed from jewels: "the sapphire's lively blue, the ruby's red." The word "mantle" is a royal garment, and the royal theme keeps growing. Once the rainbow and the peacock's eyes have been declared outdone, Warton reaches for the most famous splendour he can think of: "Judah's king," on his "glitt'ring throne," drawing the "Sheban maid" from far away. That is Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and the comparison probably echoes the Gospel saying that Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like a wildflower. Here an insect takes the place of the flower and beats the king anyway. The parenthesis "(Nature's completest miniature divine)" reads like a gasp of admiration squeezed into the middle of the sentence. All of creation's artistry has been shrunk to something that fits on a fingertip.
At this point the poem shifts from looking to serving, and "for thee" keeps coming back like a courtier's bow. The rose "renews" her buds, the lilies fill their cups with dew, and the Roman goddesses Flora and Pomona, patrons of flowers and orchard fruit, perfume the fields and shed their blooms. Zephyr, the west wind, carries the butterfly along "his gentlest gales." The butterfly has become the "gay queen of insects," with the whole natural world arranged as her court. The mythological names are conventional for verse of this kind, but they do real work here, supplying a retinue of attendants. Then comes a specific place, "Hackwood's sunny hill and verdant vales." Judging by this, the grand fantasy is set in a landscape the speaker actually walks through, which keeps the compliment lively and a little teasing.
The form supports the glitter. The poem is written in rhyming couplets of ten syllables, so every pair of lines closes neatly, like a small jewelled box: gold/behold, red/spread, shine/divine, gales/vales. Most lines end on a clear pause, which gives the verse a polished surface much like the butterfly's. The numbers are lavish too. "Ten thousand various blended tints" is hyperbole on purpose, a way of saying the colours cannot be counted.
The tone changes in the last four lines. "Let the critics know, whose pedant pride / And awkward jests our sprightly sport deride." The sounds already pick a side. "Sprightly sport" skips, while "pedant pride" and "awkward jests" are stiff and clumsy. Butterfly-chasing, it seems, has been mocked as trivial, and the speaker hits back with a reversal. Everyone who pursues "honours, fame, or wealth" merely "change[s] but the name of things" and "hunt[s] for you." The verb "hunt" is the hinge. Collecting butterflies is a chase after something bright, fluttering and hard to hold, and the poem suggests ambition is the same chase. It even ends with "you," so that "pursue" and "you" are tied together in the final rhyme, the pursuer finally paired with the prey.
The poem's interest lies in how far this joke reaches. It flatters the butterfly, defends a gentle pastime, and needles the ambitious all at once. But the argument cuts both ways. If worldly striving is only butterfly-hunting in disguise, then butterfly-hunting may be as frivolous as striving. The poem never says which way we should read it, and that balance keeps it from being a mere compliment. It is light in manner but quietly sharp, a small occasion that turns into a miniature argument about what people spend their lives chasing.