ON the crimson cloth

Of my study desk

A lustrous moth

Poised statuesque.

II

On the desk hard by

A taper burned,

Towards which the eye

Of the insect turned.

In its vague little mind

A faint desire

Rose, undefined,

For the beautiful fire.

Lightly it spread

Each silken van;

Then away it sped

For a moment's span.

And a strange delight

Lured on its course

With resistless might

Towards the central source:

And it followed the spell

Through an eddying maze,

Till it fluttered and fell

In the deadly blaze.

III

Dazzled and stunned

By the scalding pain,

One moment it swooned,

Then rose again;

And again the fire

Drew it on with its charms

To a living pyre

In its awful arms;

And now it lies

On the table here

Before my eyes

Shrivelled and sere.

IV

As I sit and muse

On its fiery fate,

What themes abstruse

Might I meditate!

For the pangs that thrilled

Through that martyred frame

As its veins were filled

With the scorching flame,

A riddle enclose

That, living or dead,

In rhyme or in prose,

No seer has read.

"But a moth," you cry,

"Is a thing so small!"

Ah, yes; but why

Should it suffer at all?

Why should a sob

For the vaguest smart

One moment throb

Through the tiniest heart?

Why in the whole

Wide universe

Should a single soul

Feel that primal curse?

Not all the throes

Of mightiest mind,

V

But if only I

In my simple song

Could tell you the Why

Of that one little wrong,

I could tell you more

Than the deepest page

Of saintliest lore

Or of wisest sage.

For never as yet

In its wordy strife

Could Philosophy get

At the import of life;

And Theology's saws

Have still to explain

The inscrutable cause

For the being of pain.

So I somehow fear

That in spite of both,

We are baffled here

By this one singed moth.