A Small White Death

Wings spoiled and frayed, it crept along the ground into the rockery leaves to hide its death. Wind-shivered garden poplars made some sound; till even these were stilled and starved of breath. The green-white wings, smeared grey, with veins exposed, like worn and weather-dirtied sheets, were closed; the antennae, like slender bowsprits, arched over the snippets of grass the day had parched. Paying their entrance fee, visitors admire foreign butterflies in zoos, and brave the heat to see them falter, fall; finally expire, like tattered handkerchieves, beside their feet. There is, in short, for man and butterfly, more than one way to watch death and to die.