Cards Against Authors

Week 2 - How Doth The Little Butterfly

Prompt ▼

Prompt Card: A butterfly as a villain.

Word Cards: Glimmering, Whirlwind (You only need to choose one word to use)

Wild Card: Constraint: Two lines in your poem must either use only one-syllable words or no one-syllable words.

Inspirations ▼

How doth the little crocodile
improve his shining tail,
and pour the waters of the Nile
on every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
how neatly spreads his claws,
and welcomes little fishes in,
with gently smiling jaws!

Lewis Carroll

which parodied

How doth the little busy bee
improve each shining hour,
and gather honey all the day
from every opening flower!

How skilfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!
And labors hard to store it well
with the sweet food she makes.

In works of labor or of skill,
I would be busy too;
for Satan finds some mischief still
for idle hands to do.

In books, or work, or healthful play,
let my first years be passed,
that I may give for every day
some good account at last.

Isaac Watts

How doth the little butterfly
improve his grip on power,
and build an army by-and-by
that grows with every hour.

How skilfully he sets the ants
against his foes, the bees.
He plots and plans, he screams and rants
"Let's bring them to their knees!"

But secretly he aims to scoff
the nectar from both groups,
and laugh his evil head right off
at playing them for dupes.

The battle is a vast whirlwind;
the mini-bugles blare.
Both armies are so disciplined
they soon forget he's there.

Across the glimm'ring pond he glides
and hums a little song.
The time has come to stiff both sides;
now nothing can go wrong.

---

How doth the little rainbow trout
his hunger satisfy?
The answer is, without a doubt,
a juicy butterfly.




Form: a-b-a-b rhyme, alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter
Stanzas: 6
Lines: 24