A Dull Eyed Rattlesnake That Lay

A dull eyed rattlesnake that lay
All loathsome, yellow-skinned, and slept,
Coil'd tight as pine-knot, in the sun
With flat head through the center run,
Struck blindly back.

Joaquin Miller

Joaquin Miller, born Cincinnatus Heine Miller, was an American poet and frontiersman known for his romanticized views of the American West. Dubbed the 'Poet of the Sierras,' Miller's works often reflected the landscapes and legends of the American frontier. He was celebrated in the late 19th century but has since become a more obscure literary figure. Despite this, his contributions offer a fascinating glimpse into a period of American history steeped in exploration and adventure.

Joaquin Miller

Juanita

Joaquin Miller, Simple Poetry

The Voice Of The California Dove

Joaquin Miller, Simple Poetry

Yosemite

Joaquin Miller, Simple Poetry

The Sun Is Dying; Space And Room

Joaquin Miller, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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The Rattlesnake

        Coiled like a clod, his eyes the home of hate,
        Where rich the harvest bows, he lies in wait,
        Linking earth's death and music, mate with mate.

        Is 't lure, or warning?    Those small bells may sing
        Like Ariel sirens, poised on viewless wing,
        To lead stark life where mailed death is king;

        Else nature's voice, in that cold, earthy thrill,
        Bids good avoid the venomed fang of ill,
        And life and death fight equal in her will.

John Charles McNeill

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.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

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
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 he...

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

The Double-Headed Snake Of Newbury

Far away in the twilight time
Of every people, in every clime,
Dragons and griffins and monsters dire,
Born of water, and air, and fire,
Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud
And ooze of the old Deucalion flood,
Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage,
Through dusk tradition and ballad age.
So from the childhood of Newbury town
And its time of fable the tale comes down
Of a terror which haunted bush and brake,
The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!

Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,
Consider that strip of Christian earth
On the desolate shore of a sailless sea,
Full of terror and mystery,
Half redeemed from the evil hold
Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,
Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew
When Time was young, and the world was ...

John Greenleaf Whittier

Dead In The Sierras

His footprints have failed us,
Where berries are red,
And madroños are rankest,
The hunter is dead!

The grizzly may pass
By his half-open door;
May pass and repass
On his path, as of yore;

The panther may crouch
In the leaves on his limb;
May scream and may scream,
It is nothing to him.

Prone, bearded, and breasted
Like columns of stone;
And tall as a pine
As a pine overthrown!

His camp fires gone,
What else can be done
Than let him sleep on
Till the light of the sun?

Ay, tombless! what of it?
Marble is dust,
Cold and repellent;
And iron is rust.

Joaquin Miller

Skeleton Flat

Here's never a bough to be tossed in the breeze,
For its long since the forest was green;
And round all the trunks of the naked white trees
The marks of the death-ring are seen.
The solemn-faced bear, who had looked on the blacks
From his home with the possum and cat,
Blinked anxiously down when the death-dealing axe
Was ring-barking Skeleton Flat.

And, strange to be seen in the evergreen south,
The gums for ten summers have stood,
And dried in the terrible furnace of drouth,
Till harder than flint is the wood.
Now tall grows the grass at the roots of the trees,
But a beautiful forest it cost;
And the heart of the splitter is sad when he sees
And thinks of the timber thats lost.

Here flies, through a sky that is glazed, the black crow,
And ...

Henry Lawson