Deeper thoughts than memory may still be suggested to English poets by the sight of a butterfly, and probably will be for hundreds of years to come.  Perhaps the best poem of a half-metaphorical, half-philosophical thought about butterflies is the beautiful prologue to Browning’s “Fifine at the Fair,” which prologue is curiously entitled “Amphibian”—­implying that we are about to have a reference to creatures capable of living in two distinctive elements, yet absolutely belonging neither to the one nor to the other.  The poet swims out far into the sea on a beautiful day; and, suddenly, looking up, perceives a beautiful butterfly flying over his head, as if watching him.  The sight of the insect at once suggests to him its relation to Greek fancy as a name for the soul; then he begins to wonder whether it might not really be the soul, or be the symbol of the soul, of a dead woman who loved him.  From that point of the poem begins a little metaphysical fantasy about the possible condition of souls.

  The fancy I had to-day,
  Fancy which turned a fear! 
  I swam far out in the bay,
  Since waves laughed warm and clear.

  I lay and looked at the sun,
  The noon-sun looked at me: 
  Between us two, no one
  Live creature, that I could see.

  Yes!  There came floating by
  Me, who lay floating too,
  Such a strange butterfly! 
  Creature as dear as new: 

  Because the membraned wings
  So wonderful, so wide,
  So sun-suffused, were things
  Like soul and nought beside.

So much for the conditions of the poet’s revery.  He is swimming in the sea; above his face, only a few inches away, the beautiful butterfly is hovering.  Its apparition makes him think of many things—­perhaps first about the dangerous position of the butterfly, for if it should only touch the water, it is certain to be drowned.  But it does not touch the water; and he begins to think how clumsy is the man who moves in water compared with the insect that moves in air, and how ugly a man is by comparison with the exquisite creature which the Greeks likened to the soul or ghost of the man.  Thinking about ghosts leads him at once to the memory of a certain very dear ghost about which he forthwith begins to dream.

  What if a certain soul
  Which early slipped its sheath,
  And has for its home the whole
  Of heaven, thus look beneath,

  Thus watch one who, in the world,
  Both lives and likes life’s way,
  Nor wishes the wings unfurled
  That sleep in the worm, they say?

  But sometimes when the weather
  Is blue, and warm waves tempt
  To free oneself of tether,
  And try a life exempt

  From worldly noise and dust,
  In the sphere which overbrims
  With passion and thought,—­why, just
  Unable to fly, one swims!