II

O Beauty, why so sad my heart?

Why stirs in me a nameless pain

Which seems like some remembered strain,

As on this product of thine art

Enraptured, marvelling I gaze,

And note how airily‘ tis wrought —

A winged dream, a bodied thought,

The spirit of the summer days?

Thy beauty opes, O Butterfly,

The doors of being, with subtle sense

Of Beauty's frail impermanence,

And grief of knowing it must die.

Again I seem to know the tears

Of other lives, the woe and pain

Of days that died; resurgent wane

The moons of countless bygone years.