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    Snakes D.H. Lawrence

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    Midhun Ganeshan
    The poem describes a snake that comes to drink water from the author's trough on a hot day. The author is initially afraid of the snake due to voices telling them snakes in Sicily can be venomous, but is also honored by its visit. When the snake leaves, the author regrets startling it away with a log.

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    Snakes D.H. Lawrence

    Uploaded by

    Midhun Ganeshan
    24 views4 pages
    The poem describes a snake that comes to drink water from the author's trough on a hot day. The author is initially afraid of the snake due to voices telling them snakes in Sicily can be venomous, but is also honored by its visit. When the snake leaves, the author regrets startling it away with a log.

    Original Description:

    Snake poem text by D.H Lawrence

    Original Title

    SNAKES D.H. LAWRENCE

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    The poem describes a snake that comes to drink water from the author's trough on a hot day. The author is initially afraid of the snake due to voices telling them snakes in Sicily can be venomous, but is also honored by its visit. When the snake leaves, the author regrets startling it away with a log.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    24 views4 pages

    Snakes D.H. Lawrence

    Uploaded by

    Midhun Ganeshan
    The poem describes a snake that comes to drink water from the author's trough on a hot day. The author is initially afraid of the snake due to voices telling them snakes in Sicily can be venomous, but is also honored by its visit. When the snake leaves, the author regrets startling it away with a log.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    Snake

    D. H. Lawrence – 1885-1930

    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

    I came down the steps with my pitcher

    And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

    He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom

    And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough

    And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,

    And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,

    He sipped with his straight mouth,

    Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,

    Silently.

    Someone was before me at my water-trough,

    And I, like a second-comer, waiting.

    He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,

    And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,

    And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,

    And stooped and drank a little more,

    Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth

    On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.


    The voice of my education said to me

    He must be killed,

    For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

    And voices in me said, If you were a man

    You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

    But must I confess how I liked him,

    How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough

    And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

    Into the burning bowels of this earth?

    Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?

    Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?

    Was it humility, to feel honoured?

    I felt so honoured.

    And yet those voices:

    If you were not afraid you would kill him.

    And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,

    But even so, honoured still more

    That he should seek my hospitality

    From out the dark door of the secret earth.

    He drank enough

    And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,

    And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
    Seeming to lick his lips,

    And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,

    And slowly turned his head,

    And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,

    Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round

    And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

    And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

    And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered further,

    A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,

    Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,

    Overcame me now his back was turned.

    I looked round, I put down my pitcher,

    I picked up a clumsy log

    And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

    I think it did not hit him,

    But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,

    Writhed like lightning, and was gone

    Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,

    At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

    And immediately I regretted it.

    I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!

    I despised myself and the voices of my accursèd human education.

    And I thought of the albatross,

    And I wished he would come back, my snake.


    For he seemed to me again like a king,

    Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

    Now due to be crowned again.

    And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords

    Of life.

    And I have something to expiate:

    A pettiness.

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