Muiopotmos; or, The Fate of the Butterflie (1590)

In Spenser's cautionary allegory on the death of the butterfly, Clarion, dedicated to his kinswoman and sometime-patroness, Lady Elizabeth Carey nee Spenser, wife of Sir George carey we find some of the loveliest lines in all of literature on the spectacular beauty of lepidoptera, lines apropos the high color and preeminent loveliness of Lady Mary Villiers, the "butterfly" of the Restoration Court:

Of all the race of silver-winged Flies
Which doo possesse the Empire of the aire,
Betwixt the center'd earth, and azure skies,
Was none more fauourable, nor more faire.

..........

Lastly the shinie wings as siluer bright,
Painted with thousand colours, passing farre,
All Painters skill, [Clarion] did about him dight:
Not half so manie sundrie colours arre
In Iris bowe, ne heuen doth shine so bright,
Distinguished with manie a twinckling starre,
Nor Junoes Bird in her ey-spotted traine
So many goodly colours doth containe.

(Spenser: Poetical Works, eds. J.C. Smith and E. De Selincourt [Oxford, 1912; 1969 ed.], II. 17-20, 89-96)

I am grateful to the editors of (Re)Soundings, who unwittingly brought my attention to this text of Spenser's in an endnote to their 'Preface' to Issue 1, No. 1.