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 so 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 farther, |
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
accursed 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.
|
D.H.
Lawrence |
Classic Poems |
|
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