Two Butterflies

Question 1

What

Answer 1

In passage __, Dickinson utilizes the butterflies’ life cycle as a conceit representing nature’s beauty and inspirational grandeur, as well as the transience of poetic vision.

Question 2

C1
‘Two Butterflies went out at Noon’
‘And waltzed upon a Farm’

Answer 2

-‘noon’ + ‘farm’ -> rural setting, height of summer.
-Personifying ‘waltz’ + metrical regularity (lilting iambic rhythm) = b’flies’ graceful movt. + exquisite beauty.

Question 3

C1
‘And Stepped straight through the firmament / And rested, on a Beam -‘

Answer 3

• L3 tone of sublime astonishment as b’flies disapp ‘through’ sky. / euph. assonance -> easeful disappearance.
  -Ostensibly, S1 = b’flies’ death, BUT,
  pers. verb ‘stepped’ -> range motion beyond physicality + luminous diction (‘noon’ etc.) suffuses S1 with ethereal quality -> b’flies not dying but transcending.
  -T/f, b’flies = symbol poetic ability, breach limits everyday cognition + nature’s ability to insp. poets’ great imaginative perception.

Question 4

C2
‘bore away Upon a shining Sea’

Answer 4

-Connotations of ‘bore away’ + enjamb. L5 to 6 -> energetic sense of transport.
-Metaphor of B’fly as seafarer -> envinces once more notion of trans, breaching limits.
-> b’flies, like poet, perc. realm unknown ontology beyond limits usual perc.

Question 4

C2
‘Never yet’ + ‘Their coming, mentioned - be -‘

Answer 4

• L7 + 8 indicate romantic notion that the ‘coming’ (presence of) the b’flies (and perceptions they represent) are ‘never’ seen or ‘mentioned’ by others, apparent as they are only to the seer-like eye of the poet.

Question 5

C2
‘If spoken by the distant Bird - If met in ether sea
No notice - was - to me -‘

Answer 5

-S3 reverses logic of S2 - poet begins to lose sight of b’flies even though external env. can bear witness to them.
-Final lines -> sp’s rueful acknow. poetic identification w. b’flies w fitful dashes final line rehearses breakdown of previously cohesive imaginative exp.

Question 6

Why

Answer 6

Ultimately, then, the intense experience of “Two Butterflies’” speaker may reflect Dickinson’s own view of the epiphanic, yet ephemeral, nature of poetic vision and nature’s sublime role in inspiring feats of imaginative perception.