Apology to a Caterpillar, Accidentally Beheaded

I did not mean to take your little life- ,
It was an accident-and I am sorry;
I would not take the life of anything,
Who am, myself, eternally Death's quarry.

I cannot know how many eons went
Into your small perfection-colors blent
With fearlessness, and fashioned to a whole
As strangely complex as the mortal soul;

With more of beauty than most men are given
In one coruscant eye like jade from heaven;
As much of mystery in your strange cycle
As he in his.

 Now there will be one less
Bright flying flower when arch-angel Michael
Goes down before the flaming word of Spring;
One less miraculous and lovely thing. . .

And so I pause, to offer an I may;
A hasty burial beside the way,
Forming this feeble epitaph, O worm,
Inch of striated velvet-and affirm
Regret at this disaster of the trail,
Although it be, alas! To no avail.

MARION DOYLE.

Vision

Today there have been lovely things
I never saw before;
Sunlight through a jar of marmalade;
A blue gate;
A rainbow in soapsuds on dishwater;
Candlelight on butter;
The crinkled smile of a little girl
Who had new shoes with tassels;
A chickadee on a thornapple;
Empurpled mud under a willow,
Where white geese slept;
White ruffled curtains sifting moonlight
On the scrubbed kitchen floor;
The under side of a white oak leaf;
Ruts in the road at sunset;
An egg yolk in a blue bowl.
My lover kissed my eyes last night.

MAY THIELGAARD WATTS.

beauty

Beauty has little to do with engaging the love of woman. The air, manner, tone, the conversation, the something that interests, the something to be proud of - these are the attributes of the man made to be loved.

-Bulwer