Wordsworths To a Butterfly, Poetry, College Term Papers.com


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Back to Subjects - Poetry

Wordsworths To a Butterfly

Wordsworths To a Butterfly William Wordsworth wrote two versions of the poem “To A Butterfly,” one in March, the other in April. In reading the poems, the situation presented is obviously the same, only interpreted differently and reflected differently. As Wordsworth himself said about poetry: it is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears.” Both versions of the poem are about the memory that the sight of a butterfly brings back, not so much a memory but a feeling the poet gets upon seeing this butterfly. In the first version of the poem the Wordsworth wrote, which I will call the “March” poem, the poet begs the butterfly to stay a while, and not to fly away. He is not calm, but almost desperate to have it stay. The phrasing of the first two lines of the poem seem to imply the inevitable disappearance of the creature, which to me is illustrated when he says “do not take thy flight” instead of “do not take flight” or “do not fly away.” The next two lines seem to personify the butterfly, for to the poet, the butterfly tells a story from his past. He finds that the creature “talks” to him, as a “historian of [his] infancy.” The butterfly revives “dead times” in him, memories past. The two lines that follow (7-8) talk about the paradox the butterfly brings, the fact that such a “gay creature” can put such a “solemn image” into his heart. The memories that the butterfly brings with it are not happy, carefree memories, but ones laden with the passage of time and all the woes that come with time. From lines 10 to 18 the poet describes the memory, one of happy times when as a young child, he and his sister would chase butterflies from bush to bush. In the last two lines, we learn that the memory is not of the two of them together, but primarily of his sister, Emmeline, who “feared to brush the dust from off its wings.” The memory seems like it should be a happy one, but the language of the beginning of the poem tells us otherwise, and we are left wondering what has happened between the memory and now. The tone of the second poem, the “April” poem, is quite different from that of the first. Here, the poet does not impose his own thoughts and impressions upon the butterfly, but simply observes it, and wonders about the natural life of a butterfly. He thinks of what it would be like to be a butterfly, thoughts that would put one in a fanciful mood, not a somber one. If the butterfly happened to take flight in the April poem, I think the poet would be happy about this (compare lines 7-9 of the April poem to lines 1-2 of the March poem). The next stanza is very important in differentiating between the uneasy sort of reflective mood of the March poem, because it describes the orchard-ground as theirs, his and his sister’s together, showing us that nothing bad has happened to her (an idea I got from the March poem). He tells the butterfly that it is welcome in their orchard whenever it would like to rest, and they would like to see him often. Lines 16-19 describe the conversations they will have (before, in the March poem, the conversation he finds in the butterfly brings a “solemn image” to his heart), how they will remember “sweet childish days, that were as long as twenty days are now.” There is no hint of the previous ominous tone of the March poem, only a sort of joyful memory of days gone by. The reason I chose to quote Wordsworth in the beginning of my paper is because I believe the memory that the sight of a butterfly brought on affected him deeply, and his first response emotionally was of wishing for days gone by, in a longing that could not be fulfilled, and therefore solemn. I believe that when he decided to review his poem, it was much to heavy for what he had desired to convey, and he changed the specific memory to a general one, and made the poem more specific when it came to the butterfly. In the March poem, there are many exclamatory, short sentences, taking us from demanding the butterfly to stay to the poet’s youthful pounces on the butterfly, and then the poet surprises us with the softly sentimental last two lines about his sister. In the March poem, he gives very little detail about his current surroundings, but describes the motions of the young children and their surroundings carefully. In the April poem, however, all the detail is given to the current time and place, and no specifics at all to “summer days.” In the March poem, the poem is the thoughts that the vision of the butterfly revives in the poet, in the April poem, he examines the butterfly then speaks to it in the next stanza. I prefer the March poem, if only for the mood. I think that the April poem is less awkward in leading from one thought to the next, but it seems a bit frivolous to me, and almost forced, where the emotion of the March poem seems stronger. If poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility,” I believe the March poem does this better than the April poem. Bibliography:

Word Count: 922