Have you ever felt a sense of wonder and awe while watching a butterfly flitting from flower to flower?
With their delicate wings and vibrant colors, butterflies have long symbolized transformation, freedom, and the beauty of nature.
Here are 10 heart-fluttering poems that capture the essence of these enchanting creatures and inspire us to embrace the transformative power of life.
Let’s take flight now!
My favorite poem about butterflies for unique women
#1 “Hay-Fields And Butterflies” by Teresa del Riego
Butterfly, butterfly, whither are you roaming,
On this summer day?
Butterfly, butterfly, my heart is for homing,
On this summer day.
June is quickly over, roses and the clover
Do not last alway!
Find for me my lover, you who are a rover
O’er the fields of hay!
Dancing, dancing, fly unto my lover,
See where he may stray;
Kiss his cheek demurely, bring him to me surely
On this same summer day!
I love this poem the most among the others because of how it turned the butterfly into a symbol of love and freedom.
I like how it expressed that a creature as delicate as a butterfly can evoke different symbols and emotions.
9 more poems about butterflies for unique women
#2 “Psyche” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The butterfly the ancient Grecians made
The soul’s fair emblem, and its only name
But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade
Of mortal life! For in this earthly frame
Ours is the reptile’s lot, much toil, much blame,
Manifold motions making little speed,
And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.
#3 “The Butterfly And The Sundial” by A. M. Stewart
A butterfly among the flowers,
With wings just tinted blue,
Paused resting on a sundial
For me to catch the hue.
O butterfly! had I your wings,
Just shimmering wings of blue,
No need for that old sundial:
Time was not made for you!
O butterfly! I envy you
Who have of me no need,
Whose life is bounded by the rays
That warm the sunlit mead.
Your life is in the golden shine
Of suns without a shade
To flit from rose to lily-cup
And idle you were made.
Yet, resting on the horologe,
A graver thought begets,
You, emblem of the Soul, while Time
The lesson grimly sets.
“Ah, envy not,” I heard a voice,
That voice so Ancient Wise,
“O man, death is the chrysalis,
And after-butterflies.”
#4 “To A Butterfly (2)” by William Wordsworth
I’ve watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless! not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!
This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister’s flowers;
Here rest your wings when they are weary;
Here lodge as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We’ll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
#5 “Moths and Butterflies” by George MacDonald
The long mantled moths that sleep at noon
And dance in the light of the mystic moon,
And the sunshiny butterflies come and go
Like beautiful thoughts moving to and fro.
And not a wave of their busy wings
Is unknown to the Spirit that moveth all things.
#6 “To A Butterfly” by William H. Davies
We have met,
You and I;
Loving man,
Lovely fly.
If I thought
You saw me,
And love made
You so free.
To come close—
I’d not move
Till you tired
Of my love.
#7 “The Butterfly” by Edwin Markham
O winged brother on the harebell, stay–
Was God’s hand very pitiful, the hand
That wrought thy beauty at a dream’s demand?
Yes, knowing I love so well the flowery way,
He did not fling me to the world astray–
He did not drop me to the weary sand,
But bore me gently to a leafy land:
Tinting my wings, He gave me to the day.
Oh, chide no more my doubting, my despair!
I will go back now to the world of men.
Farewell, I leave thee to the world of air,
Yet thou hast girded up my heart again;
For He that framed the impenetrable plan,
And keeps His word with thee, will keep with man.
#8 “To The Butterfly” by Samuel Rogers
Child of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lov’st in fields of light;
And, when the flowers of Paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky,
Expand and shut with silent ecstasy!
Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept.
And such is man; soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day!
#9 “Butterfly” by John. B. Tabb
Butterfly, Butterfly, sipping the sand,
Have you forgotten the flowers of the land?
Or are you so sated with honey and dew
That sand-filtered water tastes better to you?
#10 From “The Butterfly” by Clark Ashton Smith
I
O wonderful and wing’d flow’r,
That hoverest in the garden-close,
Finding in mazes of the rose,
The beauty of a Summer hour!
O symbol of Impermanence,
Thou art a word of Beauty’s tongue,
A word that in her song is sung,
Appealing to the inner sense!
Of that great mystic harmony,
All lovely things are notes and words –
The trees, the flow’rs, the songful birds,
The flame-white stars, the surging sea,
The aureate light of sudden dawn,
The sunset’s crimson afterglow,
The summer clouds, the dazzling snow,
The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan.
Lacking (who knows?) a cloud, a tree,
A streamlet’s purl, the ocean’s roar
From Nature’s multitudinous store –
Imperfect were the melody!
II
O Beauty, why so sad my heart?
Why stirs in me a nameless pain
Which seems like some remembered strain,
As on this product of thine art
Enraptured, marvelling I gaze,
And note how airily ’tis wrought –
A wing’d dream, a bodied thought,
The spirit of the summer days?
Thy beauty opes, O Butterfly,
The doors of being, with subtle sense
Of Beauty’s frail impermanence,
And grief of knowing it must die.
Again I seem to know the tears
Of other lives, the woe and pain
Of days that died; resurgent wane
The moons of countless bygone years.