A BUTTERFLY REVERIE
"And laugh
At gilded butterflies, and bear poor rogues
Talk of Court news."
There were but three men and a dog in the boat, but the boat was
overburdened. Not that the dog was big, or the men either. It was all on
account of the day.
It was a day in which you wanted the whole realm of Nature for
yourself--so full of sunshine and flitting butterflies was it--so beaming
with the advent of summer, and her fervent greetings, so wondrously calm
and clear. You felt selfish at the pleasure of it all. It filled you
well-nigh to surfeit, yet you would have more of it. It was too
delicious to squander upon others, yet how could one mind comprehend the
grandeur of it all?
The white boat drifted on a blue and lustrous sea. The reef points
tapped a monotonous scale as the white sails swang to the swaying of the
gaff. Listlessly the boat drifted to the barely perceptible swell,
regular as the breathings of a sleeping child. Sound and motion invited
to slumber. The shining sea, the islands, green and purple, the soft
sweet atmosphere, the full glory of a rare day, kept all the senses in
tune.
There, 4 miles away, lay the island, and close at hand the turtle were
ever and anon rising, balloon-like, from coral gardens to gulp greedy
draughts of air, which not even the salty essences of the ocean could
rob of its perfume.
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