Auguries of Innocence (selected verses)

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
...

The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spider's enmity.
He who torments the Chafer's sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night.
The Caterpillar on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mother's grief.
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly,
For the Last Judgement draweth nigh.
...

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

The Butterfly Effect serves as a metaphor for what in technical language is called 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' or 'deterministic chaos', the fact that small causes can have large effects.

A plot of the Lorenz attractor for value r = 28, σ = 10, b = 8/3
This Chaos theory equation looks like a math butterfly to me.

I saw a world anew as though for the first time and yet it was a world which had always been around me, I had just never opened the door to perceive it before.

When I first looked down my camera's viewfinder to see a Butterfly it changed my life, as it should...

Gerard Pas