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.
