And meantime, yonder streak
  Meets the horizon’s verge;
  That is the land, to seek
  If we tire or dread the surge: 

  Land the solid and safe—­
  To welcome again (confess!)
  When, high and dry, we chafe
  The body, and don the dress.

  Does she look, pity, wonder
  At one who mimics flight,
  Swims—­heaven above, sea under,
  Yet always earth in sight?

“Streak,” meaning an indistinct line, here refers to the coast far away, as it appears to the swimmer.  It is just such a word as a good Japanese painter ought to appreciate in such a relation.  In suggesting that the swimmer is glad to return to shore again and get warm, the poet is telling us that however much we may talk about the happiness of spirits in heaven—­however much we may praise heaven in poetry—­the truth is that we are very fond of this world, we like comfort, we like company, we like human love and human pleasures.  There is a good deal of nonsense in pretending that we think heaven is a better place than the world to which we belong.  Perhaps it is a better place, but, as a matter of fact, we do not know anything about it; and we should be frightened if we could go beyond a certain distance from the real world which we do know.  As he tells us this, the poet begins again to think about the spirit of the dead woman.  Is she happy?  Is she looking at him—­and pitying him as he swims, taking good care not to go too far away from the land?  Or is she laughing at him, because in his secret thoughts he confesses that he likes to live—­that he does not want to become a pure ghost at the present time?

Evidently a butterfly was quite enough, not only to make Browning’s mind think very seriously, but to make that mind teach us the truth and seriousness which may attach to very small things—­incidents, happenings of daily life, in any hour and place.  I believe that is the greatest English poem we have on the subject of the butterfly.

The idea that a butterfly might be, not merely the symbol of the soul, but in very fact the spirit of a dead person, is somewhat foreign to English thought; and whatever exists in poetry on the subject must necessarily be quite new.  The idea of a relation between insects, birds, or other living creatures, and the spirits of the dead, is enormously old in Oriental literature;—­we find it in Sanskrit texts thousands of years ago.  But the Western mind has not been accustomed to think of spiritual life as outside of man; and much of natural poetry has consequently remained undeveloped in Western countries.  A strange little poem, “The White Moth,” is an exception to the general rule that I have indicated; but I am almost certain that its author, A.T.  Quiller-Couch, must have read Oriental books, or obtained his fancy from some Eastern source.  As the knowledge of Indian literature becomes more general in England, we may expect to find poetry much influenced by Oriental ideas.  At the present time, such a composition as this is quite a strange anomaly.