Butterflies by Rudyard Kipling — Read

Eyes aloft, over dangerous places, / The children follow the butterflies, / And, in the sweat of their upturned faces, / Slash with a net at the empty skies.

So it goes they fall amid brambles, / And sting their toes on the nettle-tops, / Till, after a thousand scratches and scrambles, / They wipe their brows and the hunting stops.

Then to quiet them comes their father / And stills the riot of pain and grief, / Saying, 'Little ones, go and gather / Out of my garden a cabbage-leaf.

'You will find on it whorls and clots of / Dull grey eggs that, properly fed, / Turn, by way of the worm, to lots of / Glorious butterflies raised from the dead.,'

'Heaven is beautiful, Earth is ugly,' / The three-dimensioned preacher saith, / So we must not look where the snail and the slug lie / For Psyche's birth. And that is our death!