Ridgely Torrence

ON a sea island’s green and swaying world

Satiric Time heaps treasures, and the shore

Far to the waves echoes an old dismay;

For heavy along it certain moths lie curled:

Weapons and mouths they have, but little more;

And whosoever sees them, looks away.

Yet once that race envied the sky with tears;

And their mornings and their evenings grew

Until the mightiest flashed in wings of light,

Ravished with blood up from the creeping years

To beat against the floor of heaven and through,

And pour down daysprings gloriously bright,

Mad butterflies: that hour a wind prepared

Emptied the air of all, and they were drowned,

And the sea moaned that washed their holy wings.

But these the wingless, these who never dared,

Went warm and safe and fat upon the ground;

And later, in due season, put forth stings.