Page:Tortoises, DH Lawrence, 1921.djvu/34

 Rh Into an enormously wide-beaked mouth Like sudden curved scissors, And gulping at more than she can swallow, and working her thick, soft tongue, And having the bread hanging over her chin.

O Mistress, Mistress, Reptile mistress, Your eye is very dark, very bright, And it never softens Although you watch. She knows, She knows well enough to come for food, Yet she sees me not; Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything, Sightful, sightless, seeing and visionless, Reptile mistress.

Taking bread in her curved, gaping, toothless mouth, She has no qualm when she catches my finger in    her steel overlapping gums, But she hangs on, and my shout and my shrinking are nothing to her, Rh