Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

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From peotry corner, Alexander Pope’s spectacular phrase. Not entirely clear what this all means, but you sense that the Popester was a fellow traveller:

Let Sporus tremble – “What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys,

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