Its apparition makes him think of many things--perhaps first about the dangerous position of the butterfly, for if it should only touch the water, it is certain to be drowned.

But it does not touch the water; and he begins to think how clumsy is the man who moves in water compared with the insect that moves in air, and how ugly a man is by comparison with the exquisite creature which the Greeks likened to the soul or ghost of the man.

Thinking about ghosts leads him at once to the memory of a certain very dear ghost about which he forthwith begins to dream.
What if a certain soul Which early slipped its sheath, And has for its home the whole Of heaven, thus look beneath, Thus watch one who, in the world, Both lives and likes life's way, Nor wishes the wings unfurled That sleep in the worm, they say?
But sometimes when the weather Is blue, and warm waves tempt To free oneself of tether, And try a life exempt From worldly noise and dust, In the sphere which overbrims With passion and thought,--why, just Unable to fly, one swims! This is better understood by paraphrase: "I wonder if the soul of a certain person, who lately died, slipped so gently out of the hard sheath of the perishable body--I wonder if she does not look down from her home in the sky upon me, just as that little butterfly is doing at this moment.
And I wonder if she laughs at the clumsiness of this poor swimmer, who finds it so much labour even to move through the water, while she can move through whatever she pleases by the simple act of wishing.

And this man, strangely enough, does not want to die, and to become a ghost.

He likes to live very much; he does not yet desire those soul-wings which are supposed to be growing within the shell of his body, just as the wings of the butterfly begin to grow in the chrysalis.