g,
And flit on errands all the livelong day;
Each field mouse keeps the homestead whence it sprung;
But thou art nature's freeman--free to stray
Unfettered through the wood, 5
Seeking thine airy food,
The sweetness spiced on every blossomed spray.

The garden one wide banquet spreads for thee,
O daintiest reveler of the joyous earth!
One drop of honey gives satiety; 10
A second draft would drug thee past all mirth.
Thy feast no orgy shows;
Thy calm eyes never close,
Thou soberest sprite to which the sun gives birth.

And yet the soul of man upon thy wings 15
Forever soars in aspiration; thou
His emblem of the new career that springs
When death's arrest bids all his spirit bow.
He seeks his hope in thee
Of immortality. 20
Symbol of life, me with such faith endow!

1. What color was the butterfly that the poet
watched? What does he imagine it to be in the
second stanza? In the third? What does he say about
its habits in the fourth stanza? In the fifth?

2. What are the four stages in the life of a
butterfly? The Greeks represented Psyche, the soul,
with butterfly wings. Why? Express the meaning of
the last stanza in your own words.

3. Use these words in sentences of your own:
cipher, fostering, imbues, blazonry, satiety, orgy,
sprite, arrest, symbol.

4. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) was an
American writer of essays and biography.

IN THE DESERT

BY A. W. KINGLAKE

The following sketch vividly describes an English
traveler's impression of the desert country that
lies between Jerusalem and Cairo. Mr. Kinglake had
only an interpreter, two Arabian attendants and two
camels in his little caravan.

_Eothen_, the title of the volume from which this
selection is extracted, is a Greek word meaning
"From the East."

Once during this passage my Arabs lost their way
among the hills of loose sand that surrounded us,
but after a while we were lucky enough to recover our right
line of march. The same day we fell in with a sheik, the
h