Chrysalised

But there is a faëry always folded away in our souls, like a bright butterfly chrysalised, and sailing eastward, layer after layer of propriety, moderation, deference to public opinion, safety of sentiment, and all the thick crusts of compromise and convention roll away, and bending southward up the Nile, you may feel that faëry fairly flutter her wings.

For here we crawl awhile, and feed, and weave a little web, / Anon, when chrysalised in death, to be our strait cocoon: / For each man’s works that follow him, do clothe him in their meshes, / He hath wrought out for himself his robe of shame or honour.

I believe, nay, I assert with confidence and deliberation, having clearly in mind all other bedroom woes—such as hard mattress, flock pillows, scant covering, intrusive dawn, eoan bird-songs, disappointed or fatiguing love, companions lapped and chrysalised in robbed blankets and close-gripped sheets, and yet turning and ever turning still—I say with deliberation, that this is the shrewdest stroke of fortune, the harshest bedroom chance, a light only extinguishable by the door.

The furled sails were chrysalised butterflies, not yet ready for their day, shut away until the moment when they would leap forth in all their surprising beauty.

In this instance the sinister chrysalised pupa – an image which had been used by the Librans in the past – represented a symbolic play on the word ‘bug’.

Baptised, not evangelised, / the chrysalised butterfly / spreads wings dappled / with bloody specks, and / mates with clouds, / Rapturous.

In a surviving photograph, she’s chrysalised in a huge black silk dress.