Dan,
    How about Frost's "ant" poem "DEpartmental"? It fits your theory rather
well.

Burt,
    On Terrell's wasp cocoon, I think he is mistaken. Pound describes the
emerging young wasp as green but not the casque of the cocoon. I take it
those are Paper wasps or Mud Daubers. In either case their "casque"
constructions are gray or brown not green.
    I favor the Monarch butterfly as Pound's subject.  Go to-

    http://adver-net.com/Monemerg.html
(The wonders of the Net!)

    The Monarch larva feeds on the milkweed plant. See Notes for Canto CXVII
et seq.

    "Milkweed  the sustenance
         as to enter arcanum."
 "Arcanum" has hermetic and alchemical transmutational overtones as well as
metaphoric.

CDM