Page:Emily Dickinson Poems - second series (1891).djvu/154

 142 POEMS.

XXIV. 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.