The snake
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.
Emily Dickinson