Perhaps it is a better place, but, as a matter of fact, we do not know anything about it; and we should be frightened if we could go beyond a certain distance from the real world which we do know.

As he tells us this, the poet begins again to think about the spirit of the dead woman.

Is she happy?
Is she looking at him--and pitying him as he swims, taking good care not to go too far away from the land?
Or is she laughing at him, because in his secret thoughts he confesses that he likes to live--that he does not want to become a pure ghost at the present time?
Evidently a butterfly was quite enough, not only to make Browning's mind think very seriously, but to make that mind teach us the truth and seriousness which may attach to very small things--incidents, happenings of daily life, in any hour and place.

I believe that is the greatest English poem we have on the subject of the butterfly.
The idea that a butterfly might be, not merely the symbol of the soul, but in very fact the spirit of a dead person, is somewhat foreign to English thought; and whatever exists in poetry on the subject must necessarily be quite new.

The idea of a relation between insects, birds, or other living creatures, and the spirits of the dead, is enormously old in Oriental literature;--we find it in Sanskrit texts thousands of years ago.