Snake Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFD GHAIJKDD AL MMNFOLDPJ QA RAJO RRPP JR FPO STUJCPRPJ VEVEP EWE RPXPT PPT JY LPZ JA2PJA snake came to my water trough | A |
On a hot hot day and I in pyjamas for the heat | B |
To drink there | C |
In the deep strange scented shade of the great dark carob tree | D |
I came down the steps with my pitcher | E |
And must wait must stand and wait for there he was at the trough before | F |
me | D |
- | |
He reached down from a fissure in the earth wall in the gloom | G |
And trailed his yellow brown slackness soft bellied down over the edge of | H |
the stone trough | A |
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom | I |
And where the water had dripped from the tap in a small clearness | J |
He sipped with his straight mouth | K |
Softly drank through his straight gums into his slack long body | D |
Silently | D |
- | |
Someone was before me at my water trough | A |
And I like a second comer waiting | L |
- | |
He lifted his head from his drinking as cattle do | M |
And looked at me vaguely as drinking cattle do | M |
And flickered his two forked tongue from his lips and mused a moment | N |
And stooped and drank a little more | F |
Being earth brown earth golden from the burning bowels of the earth | O |
On the day of Sicilian July with Etna smoking | L |
The voice of my education said to me | D |
He must be killed | P |
For in Sicily the black black snakes are innocent the gold are venomous | J |
- | |
And voices in me said If you were a man | Q |
You would take a stick and break him now and finish him off | A |
- | |
But must I confess how I liked him | R |
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet to drink at my water trough | A |
And depart peaceful pacified and thankless | J |
Into the burning bowels of this earth | O |
- | |
Was it cowardice that I dared not kill him | R |
Was it perversity that I longed to talk to him | R |
Was it humility to feel so honoured | P |
I felt so honoured | P |
- | |
And yet those voices | J |
If you were not afraid you would kill him | R |
- | |
And truly I was afraid I was most afraid But even so honoured still more | F |
That he should seek my hospitality | P |
From out the dark door of the secret earth | O |
- | |
He drank enough | S |
And lifted his head dreamily as one who has drunken | T |
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air so black | U |
Seeming to lick his lips | J |
And looked around like a god unseeing into the air | C |
And slowly turned his head | P |
And slowly very slowly as if thrice adream | R |
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round | P |
And climb again the broken bank of my wall face | J |
- | |
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole | V |
And as he slowly drew up snake easing his shoulders and entered farther | E |
A sort of horror a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole | V |
Deliberately going into the blackness and slowly drawing himself after | E |
Overcame me now his back was turned | P |
- | |
I looked round I put down my pitcher | E |
I picked up a clumsy log | W |
And threw it at the water trough with a clatter | E |
- | |
I think it did not hit him | R |
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste | P |
Writhed like lightning and was gone | X |
Into the black hole the earth lipped fissure in the wall front | P |
At which in the intense still noon I stared with fascination | T |
- | |
And immediately I regretted it | P |
I thought how paltry how vulgar what a mean act | P |
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education | T |
- | |
And I thought of the albatross | J |
And I wished he would come back my snake | Y |
- | |
For he seemed to me again like a king | L |
Like a king in exile uncrowned in the underworld | P |
Now due to be crowned again | Z |
- | |
And so I missed my chance with one of the lords | J |
Of life | A2 |
And I have something to expiate | P |
A pettiness | J |
D. H. Lawrence
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about Snake poem by D. H. Lawrence
Best Poems of D. H. Lawrence