Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


BUTTERFLIES by SIEGFRIED SASSOON

Poet Analysis

First Line: FRAIL TRAVELLERS, DEFTLY FLICKERING OVER THE FLOWERS
Last Line: TO KNOW BUT THIS, THE PHANTOM GLARE OF DAY.
Subject(s): BUTTERFLIES; INSECTS; BUGS;

FRAIL Travellers, deftly flickering over the flowers;
O living flowers against the heedless blue
Of summer days, what sends them dancing through
This fiery-blossom'd revel of the hours?

Theirs are the musing silences between
The enraptured crying of shrill birds that make
Heaven in the wood while summer dawns awake;
And theirs the faintest winds that hush the green.

And they are as my soul that wings its way
Out of the starlit dimness into morn:
And they are as my tremulous being -- born
To know but this, the phantom glare of day.




Home: PoetryExplorer.net