Butterfly Laughter
In the middle of our porridge platesThere was a blue butterfly paintedAnd each morning we tried who should reach the butterfly first.Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor butterfly.”That made us laugh.Always she said it and always it started us laughing.It seemed such a sweet little joke.I was certain that one fine morningThe butterfly would fly out of the plates,Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world,And perch on the Grandmother’s lap.
About this text
Butterfly Laughter is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #59276; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Katherine Mansfield, Butterfly Laughter, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59276, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mansfield-poems/butterfly-laughter.html, id L27570.
Form and metre
Butterfly Laughter is 11 lines in a single stanza.
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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 A-------A-- platesA · painted · first · butterfly · laugh · laughing · joke · morning · platesA · world · lap
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| In the middle of our porridge plates | 9 | ··/˘·//˘· |
| There was a blue butterfly painted | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| And each morning we tried who should reach the butterfly first. | 14 | ··/˘······/˘·· |
| Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor butterfly.” | 14 | ··/·˘······/˘· |
| That made us laugh. | 4 | ···· |
| Always she said it and always it started us laughing. | 14 | /˘····/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| It seemed such a sweet little joke. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| I was certain that one fine morning | 9 | ··/˘···/˘ |
| The butterfly would fly out of the plates, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world, | 9 | /˘·/˘···· |
| And perch on the Grandmother’s lap. | 8 | ····/·˘· |
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.