We recently had an unusual visitor to our front door, where it clung for hours: this beautiful Lime Hawkmoth. I’m afraid my attempt at a photo doesn’t really do justice to it: the dark patches should be blacker, the green more vivid. It reminded me that I had once written a poem about moth names, which I find fascinating for their idiosyncratic poetry. They are not folk-names – since, unlike plants, Lepidoptera are not obviously useful the common folk never seem to have had much interest in differentiating and naming moths and the vernacular names are the invention of various gentleman naturalists who began to emerge in the eighteenth century: the full story can be found in Peter Marren’s very readable book ‘Emperors, Admirals and Chimney Sweepers’.

In the first five stanzas of my poem I imagine one of those early naturalists speaking in answer to someone who has hailed him as a poet, and modestly disclaiming the title. The remaining three stanzas are my own fanciful elegy for his kind.

‘arms and the man I did not sing’: an allusion to the opening words of Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’: ‘Arma virumque cano’, I sing arms and the man.

Naming The Moths

‘You’d call me poet? Hardly, Sir,
         Arms and the man I did not sing,
But once upon an August night
         I named the Yellow Underwing.

‘We found on language’s great map
         A little corner, left all blank.
Such handiwork, without a name!
         (The Maiden’s Blush has me to thank).

‘How I recall that dew-damp eve
         Of honeysuckle-scented June
When first upon the Silver Y
         I set the summons of man’s rune.

‘I see them now, our haunts of old,
         Our hedgerow banks, our woodland glades,
Like memory itself they flit,
         My Early Thorns, my Angle Shades.

‘And some, you say, would honour us?
         Then, Sir, I am obliged to you,
But such was never our intent.
         We did what seemed our own to do.’

Swifts and Ushers, fold your wings
         Softly on the moonlit land.
They who loved you best are gone,
         Walking somewhere, lamp in hand,

Seeking down eternal lanes
         Moths the angels might have missed,
Proffering before the Throne
         ‘Some Amendments to Your List. ‘

Willow Beauty, Burnished Brass,
         China Mark and all the Plumes
With the Footmen gather, dance
         Lightly now above these tombs.

David Sutton