““The Blue Fly" Five summer days, five summer nights, The ignorant, loutish, giddy blue-fly Hung without motion on the cling peach Humming occasionally ‘O my love, my fair one!’ As in the canticles. Magnified one thousand times, the insect Looks farcically human; laugh if you will! Bald head, stage fairy wings, blear eyes, A caved-in chest, hairy black mandibles, Long spindly thighs. The crime was detected on the sixth day. What then could be said or done? By anyone? It would have been vindictive, mean, and what-not, To swat that fly for being a blue-fly, For debauch of a peach. Is it fair either, to bring a microscope To bear on the case, even in search of truth? Nature, doubtless, has some compelling cause To glut the carriers of her epidemics - Nor did the peach complain.””
