I cannot separate the aesthetic pleasure of seeing a butterfly and the scientific pleasure of knowing what it is.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Our love went from fly to flower to butterfly, and it was meant to beautifully flutter, not sit still on a shelf like a trophy to be collected.

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.

"Aeneas' mother is a star?"

"No; a goddess."

I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus."

He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..."

It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy."

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.

ATT. Venus, who hath her station at thy gates. HIPP. I, who am chaste, salute her at a distance. ATT. Venerable is she, however, and of note among mortals. HIPP. Different Gods and men are objects of regard to different persons.

of Venus,

do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation

Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."

Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing. I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such things. Nowadays people are as good as born in their clothes, and there is practically not a nude human being in existence. An artist, therefore, as you must candidly confess, cannot sculpture nudity with a pure heart, if only because he is compelled to steal guilty glimpses at hired models. The marble inevitably loses its chastity under such circumstances. An old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the open sunshine, and among pure and princely maidens, and thus the nude statues of antiquity are as modest as violets, and sufficiently draped in their own beauty. But as for Mr. Gibson's colored Venuses (stained, I believe, with tobacco juice), and all other nudities of to-day, I really do not understand what they have to say to this generation, and would be glad to see as many heaps of quicklime in their stead.

"Venus Transiens"

Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she topped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli’s vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?

For me,
You stand poised
In the blue and buoyant air,
Cinctured by bright winds,
Treading the sunlight.
And the waves which precede you
Ripple and stir
The sands at my feet.

Amy Lowell, <i>Imagist Poetry: An Anthology</i>. Ed. Bob Blaisdell (Dover Publications; Later Printing edition, March 17, 2011)