Read "The Snake" by Emily Dickinson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A narrow fellow in the grass / Occasionally rides; / You may have met him, -- did you not, / His notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb, / A spotted shaft is seen; / And then it closes at your feet / And opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre, / A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot, / I more than once, at morn,
Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash / Unbraiding in the sun, -- / When, stooping to secure it, / It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature's people / I know, and they know me; / I feel for them a transport / Of cordiality;
But never met this fellow, / Attended or alone, / Without a tighter breathing, / And zero at the bone.