summer noon
No more creeping for the butterfly ; wings of splendour now . Neither yet has it lost the feet wherewith to alight on all that is lovely and sweet . Think of it -- up from the toilsome journey over the low ground , exposed to the foot of every passer-by , destroying the lovely leaves upon which it fed , and the fruit which they should shelter , up to the path at will through the air , and a gathering of food which hurts not the source of it , a food which is but as a tribute from the loveliness of the flowers to the yet higher loveliness of the flower-angel : is not this a resurrection ? Its children too shall pass through the same process , to wing the air of a summer noon , and rejoice in the ethereal and the pure . `` To return yet again from the human thoughts suggested by the symbol of the butterfly '' -- Here let me pause for a moment -- and there was a corresponding pause , though but momentary , in the sermon as I spoke it -- to mention a curious , and to me at the moment an interesting fact . At this point of my address , I caught sight of a white butterfly , a belated one , flitting about the church . Absorbed for a moment , my eye wandered after it .