Butterfly in Emily Dickinson’s garden and in ours

A gardener like Emily Dickinson worked alongside with bees and butterflies all the time, it shouldn’t be a surprise that her poems abound with bees and butterflies.


I am curious about her using ‘Chrysoprase’ (a gem stone) since the pupa of a butterfly is also called ‘chrysalis’. I am not aware that butterfly is attracted to buttercup, but I also read butterfly and buttercup together in one other poem. A New England Town is of course Amherst, Massachusetts.

The Butterfly's Assumption Gown
In Chrysoprase Apartments hung
This afternoon put on –


How condescending to descent
And be of Buttercups teh friend
In a New England Town –