Advice to a Butterfly
Aimless petal of the wind,Spinning gently weird circles,To the flowers underneathYou are a drunken king of motion;To the plunging winds aboveYou are momentary indecision.
Aimless petal of the wind,Waver carelessly against this June.The universe, like you, is butThe drowsy arm of stillnessSpinning gently weird circles in his sleep.
Words in this poem
- aimless a.
- Without aim or purpose; as, an aimless life.
- indecision n.
- Want of decision; want of settled purpose, or of firmness; indetermination; wavering of mind; irresolution; vacillation; hesitation. [Pref. in- not + decision: cf. F. indécision.]
- waver v. i.
- To play or move to and fro; to move one way and the other; hence, to totter; to reel; to swing; to flutter. [OE. waveren, from AS. wæfre wavering, restless. See Wave, v. i.]
- stillness n.
- The quality or state of being still; quietness; silence; calmness; inactivity.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Advice to a Butterfly is in the public domain. This text is taken from Advice: A Book of Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #60252; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Maxwell Bodenheim, Advice to a Butterfly, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/advice-to-a-butterfly.html, id L23375.
Form and metre
Advice to a Butterfly is 11 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Aimless petal of the wind, | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| Spinning gently weird circles, | 7 | /˘/˘·/˘ |
| To the flowers underneath | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| You are a drunken king of motion; | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
| To the plunging winds above | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| You are momentary indecision. | 9 | ··/˘·˘˘/˘ |
| Aimless petal of the wind, | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| Waver carelessly against this June. | 8 | /˘/˘···· |
| The universe, like you, is but | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The drowsy arm of stillness | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| Spinning gently weird circles in his sleep. | 10 | /˘/˘·/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.