Blue-Butterfly Day

It is blue-butterfly day here in spring,
And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

Where this text comes from

First published in New Hampshire (1923). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2] [3]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-frost_new-hampshire, new-hampshire.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1#L8.

Cite this poem

Robert Frost (1874–1963). “Blue-Butterfly Day.” First published in New Hampshire (1923). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-frost/blue-butterfly-day/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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