Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/441

 A COLLEGE BREAKFAST-PARTY. 405

For just three days above the Italian fields, Poising in sunshine, fluttering toward its bride, Should fast and speculate, considering What were if it were not ? or what now is Instead of that which seems to be itself ? Ets deepest wisdom surely were to be

sipping, marrying, blue-winged butterfly ; S^ince utmost speculation on itself ^^lere but a three days' living of worse sort — A Jbruising struggle all within the bounds Of lyutterfly existence."

" I protest," Burst in Laertes, " against arguments That &tart with calling me a butterfly, A bubl^le, spark, or other metaphor Which parries your conclusions as a phrase In quibbling law will carry property. Put a thill sucker for my human lips Fed at a n^other's breast, who now needs food That I Avili' earn for her ; put bubbles blown Prom froth y thinking, for the joy, the love, The wants, .the pity, and the fellowship (The ocean (jleeps I might say, were I bent On bandying^ metaphors) that make a man — Why, rhetor ic brings within your easy reach Conclusions ^orthy of — a butterfly. The universe, I hold, is no charade, ISTo acted puni unriddled by a word, Kor pain a dtjcimal diminishing With hocus-pOcus of a dot or naught. For those whcp know it, pain is solely pain : Not any lettei^-s of the alphabet Wrought syllogistically pattern-wise, Nor any cluster of fine images. Nor any missing of their figured dance