The Bold Bad Butterfly

ne day a Poppy, just in play, Said to a butterfly, “Go ’way, Go ’way, you naughty thing! Oh, my! But you’re a bold bad butterfly!” Of course ’t was only said in fun, He was a perfect paragon— In every way a spotless thing (Save for two spots upon his wing).

ne day a Poppy, just in play,

Of course ’t was only said in fun, He was a perfect paragon— In every way a spotless thing (Save for two spots upon his wing).

But tho’ his morals were the best, He could not understand a jest; And somehow what the Poppy said Put ideas in his little head, And soon he really came to wish He were the least bit “devilish.”

He then affected manners rough And strained his voice to make it gruff, And scowled as who should say “Beware, I am a dangerous character. You’d best not fool with me, for I— I am a bold, bad butterfly.”

He then affected manners rough

And strained his voice to make it gruff,

And scowled as who should say “Beware,

I am a dangerous character.

You’d best not fool with me, for I—

I am a bold, bad butterfly.”

He hung around the wildest flowers, And kept the most unseemly hours, With dragonflies and drunken bees, And learned to say “By Jove!” with ease Until his pious friends, aghast, Exclaimed, “He’s getting awf’lly fast!”

He shunned the nicer flowers, and threw Out hints of shady things he knew About the laurels, and one day He even went so far to say Something about the lilies sweet I could not possibly repeat! At length, it seems, from being told How bad he was, he grew so bold, This most obnoxious butterfly, That one day, swaggering ’round the sky, He swaggered in the net of Mist- er Jones, the entomologist.

“It seems a sin,” said Mr. J., “This harmless little thing to slay,” As, taking it from out his net, He pinned it to a board, and set Upon a card below the same, In letters large, its Latin name, Which is—

but I omit it, lest Its family might be distressed, And stop the little sum per year They pay me not to print it here.

p to my frozen window-shelf Each day a begging birdie comes, And when I have a crust myself The birdie always gets the crumbs. They say who on the water throws His bread, will get it back again; If that is true, perhaps—who knows?— I have not cast my crumbs in vain.