Explore "The Butterfly's Day" by Emily Dickinson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
From cocoon forth a butterfly / As lady from her door / Emerged -- a summer afternoon -- / Repairing everywhere,
Without design, that I could trace, / Except to stray abroad / On miscellaneous enterprise / The clovers understood.
Her pretty parasol was seen / Contracting in a field / Where men made hay, then struggling hard / With an opposing cloud,
Where parties, phantom as herself, / To Nowhere seemed to go / In purposeless circumference, / As 't were a tropic show.
And notwithstanding bee that worked, / And flower that zealous blew, / This audience of idleness / Disdained them, from the sky,
Till sundown crept, a steady tide, / And men that made the hay, / And afternoon, and butterfly, / Extinguished in its sea.