SNAKE POEMS

Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
.....

D. H. Lawrence

L' Envoi

There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield
And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing:-'Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover
And your English summer's done.'
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Auguries Of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
.....

William Blake

A Boy Named Sue

Well, my daddy left home when I was three,
and he didn't leave much to Ma and me,
just this old guitar and a bottle of booze.
Now I don't blame him because he run and hid,
.....

Shel Silverstein

The English Flag

Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack,
remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately
when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts,
and seemed to see significance in the incident. -- DAILY PAPERS.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Summer Storm

The panther wind
Leaps out of the night,
The snake of lightning
Is twisting and white,
.....

Sara Teasdale

It Came His Turn To Beg'

1500

It came his turn to beg-
The begging for the life
.....

Emily Dickinson

Lancelot 06

The dark of Modred's hour not yet availing,
Gawaine it was who gave the King no peace;
Gawaine it was who goaded him and drove him
To Joyous Gard, where now for long his army,
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Adonais

I weep for Adonais-he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Medallion

By the gate with star and moon
Worked into the peeled orange wood
The bronze snake lay in the sun

.....

Sylvia Plath

The Wizard Way

[Dedicated to General J.C.F. Fuller]

Velvet soft the night-star glowed
Over the untrodden road,
.....

Aleister Crowley

Afar In The Desert

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the Present, I cling to the Past;
.....

Thomas Pringle

Cassandra

Mirth the halls of Troy was filling,
Ere its lofty ramparts fell;
From the golden lute so thrilling
Hymns of joy were heard to swell.
.....

Friedrich Schiller

The Italian In England

That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds through the countryside,
.....

Robert Browning

Snake

He glides so swiftly
Back into the grass-
Gives me the courtesy of road
To let me pass,
.....

Langston Hughes

The Onset

now lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
.....

Robert Frost

Endymion: Book Iii

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
.....

John Keats

My Paw Said So

Foxes can talk if you know how to listen,
My Paw said so.
Owls have big eyes that sparkle an' glisten,
My Paw said so.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Discrimination

Ooh you what an evil thing
What a cruel word
You have a heart of a rock I say, how can you make our children loose their life's before time? You are a fiasco in our lives, a forever pain in our hearts and a forever negativity in our self esteems

.....

Palesa Molokomme

The Cry Of A Lost Soul

In that black forest, where, when day is done,
With a snake's stillness glides the Amazon
Darkly from sunset to the rising sun,

.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Mal Agueros

If you come to Mojacar
and peel open an orange full of worms,
count how many there are because
those are the days it will take for your body
.....

Nick Carbo

The Grateful Snake.

Ingratitude! of earth the shame!
Thou monster, at whose hated name,
The nerves of kindness ake;
Would I could drive thee from mankind,
.....

William Hayley

Monna Innominata: A Sonnet Of Sonnets

1

Lo dì che han detto a' dolci amici addio. (Dante)
Amor, con quanto sforzo oggi mi vinci! (Petrarca)
.....

Christina Rossetti

Thousand Star Hotel, Hanoi

I.

Over the road from the three star Galaxy Hotel is our hotel,
the old park on Phan Dinh Phung Street,
.....

S. K. Kelen

The Night Before

Look you, Dominie; look you, and listen!
Look in my face, first; search every line there;
Mark every feature,-chin, lip, and forehead!
Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Deserted Village

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:
.....

Oliver Goldsmith

Christmas Eve

I

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
.....

Robert Browning

Price Lake: 1961

Mouths shackled, dead or dying,
the bluegills, rainbows and browns
dangled from shiny metal
my father had thrown like chain
.....

Ron Rash

A Song Of Bananas (brazilian Verses)

Have you no Bananas, simple townsmen all?
"Nay, but we have them certainly.
"We buy them off the barrows, with the vegetable-marrows
"And the cabbage of our own country,
.....

Rudyard Kipling

A Triumph Of Order.

A squad of regular infantry,
In the Commune's closing days,
Had captured a crowd of rebels
By the wall of Pere-la-Chaise.
.....

John Milton Hay

Hate

They say we must not hate, nor fight in hate.
I've thought it over many a solemn hour,
And cannot mildly view the man or state
That has no thought, save only to be great;
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Adrift: A Brisbane River Reverie

An amphitheatre of purple hills
And emerald slopes where nestling villas gleam,
Flooded with golden light that crowns and fills
Height, vale, and stream.
.....

George Essex Evans

Cleopatra

HER mouth is fragrant as a vine,
A vine with birds in all its boughs;
Serpent and scarab for a sign
Between the beauty of her brows
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Manfred (excerpt: Incantation)

When the moon is on the wave,
And the glow-worm in the grass,
And the meteor on the grave,
And the wisp on the morass;
.....

George Gordon Byron

Europe, The 72d And 73d Years Of These States

1

Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le'pt forth, half startled at itself,
.....

Walt Whitman

Snap-dragon

She bade me follow to her garden, where
The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup
Between the old grey walls; I did not dare
To raise my face, I did not dare look up,
.....

D. H. Lawrence

Captain Dobbin

CAPTAIN Dobbin, having retired from the South Seas
In the dumb tides of , with a handful of shells,
A few poisoned arrows, a cask of pearls,
And five thousand pounds in the colonial funds,
.....

Kenneth Slessor

The Fight With The Dragon

Why run the crowd? What means the throng
That rushes fast the streets along?
Can Rhodes a prey to flames, then, be?
In crowds they gather hastily,
.....

Friedrich Schiller

Mogg Megone - Part Iii.

Ah! weary Priest! - with pale hands pressed
On thy throbbing brow of pain,
Baffled in thy life-long quest,
Overworn with toiling vain,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Man & The Snake

In pity he brought the poor Snake
To be warmed at his fire. A mistake!
For the ungrateful thing
Wife & children would sting.
.....

Walter Crane

Snake

BUT, Snake, you must not come where we abide,
For you would tempt us; we should hear you say:

'Oh, somewhere was a world was cold and spare,
.....

Padraic Colum

To The Snake

Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck
and stroked your cold, pulsing throat
as you hissed to me, glinting
arrowy gold scales, and I felt
.....

Denise Levertov

The Silken Snake

For sport my Julia threw a lace
Of silk and silver at my face:
Watchet the silk was, and did make
A show, as if't ‘ad been a snake:
.....

Robert Herrick

Snake

I saw a young snake glide
Out of the mottled shade
And hang, limp on a stone:
A thin mouth, and a tongue
.....

Theodore Roethke

What The Snake Saw

A little girl and a big ugly man
Went down the road. The girl was crying
And asking to go home, but when she ran
He hit her on the head and sent her flying,
.....

James Stephens

Anger

Anger in its time and place
May assume a kind of grace.
It must have some reason in it,
And not last beyond a minute.
.....

Charles Lamb

If Men

If men are habitations of God, we should fall at their feet
But we should leave alone their habits and goals.
Fire is good to drive away cold
But you must not tie it up
.....

Sant Tukaram

A Sort Of A Song

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
.....

William Carlos Williams

The Warner

Every man worth the name
has a yellow snake in his soul,
seated as on a throne, saying
if he cries: â??I want to!â??: â??No!â??
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Imitators

A boat came in; the cliff was baked;
The noisy boat-chain fell and clanked on
The sand-an iron rattle-snake,
A rattling rust among the plankton.
.....

Boris Pasternak