A Snake.

Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
Until we meet a snake;
'T is then we sigh for houses,
And our departure take
At that enthralling gallop
That only childhood knows.
A snake is summer's treason,
And guile is where it goes.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, born on December 10, 1830, and died on May 15, 1886, was an American poet who is extensively known for her innovative and poignant use of language and form. Her work, largely unpublished and unknown during her lifetime, has since positioned her among the greatest American poets. Although she seldom left her home, her poetry delved deeply into themes of death, immortality, nature, and human consciousness. Dickinson's unique style continues to influence poets and readers today.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

She Sweeps With Many-Colored Brooms,

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, Simple Poetry

Gone.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, Simple Poetry

Resurrection.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, Simple Poetry

The Monument.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

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

The Snake.

My love and I, the other day,
Within a myrtle arbor lay,
When near us, from a rosy bed,
A little Snake put forth its head.

"See," said the maid with thoughtful eyes--
"Yonder the fatal emblem lies!
"Who could expect such hidden harm
"Beneath the rose's smiling charm?"

Never did grave remark occur
Less à-propos than this from her.

I rose to kill the snake, but she,
Half-smiling, prayed it might not be.

"No," said the maiden--and, alas,
    Her eyes spoke volumes, while she said it--
"Long as the snake is in the grass,
    "One may, perhaps, have cause to dread it:
"But, when its wicked eyes appear,
    "And when we know for what they wink so,
"One must be very simple, dear,
    "To let it wound one--do...

Thomas Moore

The Snake That Dances

How I love to watch, dear indolence,
like a bright shimmer,
of fabric, the skin of your elegant
body glimmer!

Over the bitter-tasting perfume,
the depths of your hair,
odorous, restless spume,
blue, and brown, waves, there,

like a vessel that stirs, awake
when dawn winds rise,
my dreaming soul sets sail
for those distant skies.

Your eyes where nothings revealed
either acrid or sweet,
are two cold jewels where steel
and gold both meet.

Seeing your rhythmic advance,
your fine abandon,
one might speak of a snake that danced
at the end of the branch its on.

Under its burden of languidness,
your heads child-like slant,
rocks with weak listlessness
like a young elephants,

and your body h...

Charles Baudelaire

Secrets.

The skies can't keep their secret!
They tell it to the hills --
The hills just tell the orchards --
And they the daffodils!

A bird, by chance, that goes that way
Soft overheard the whole.
If I should bribe the little bird,
Who knows but she would tell?

I think I won't, however,
It's finer not to know;
If summer were an axiom,
What sorcery had snow?

So keep your secret, Father!
I would not, if I could,
Know what the sapphire fellows do,
In your new-fashioned world!

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

April.

An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads, --
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus' mystery
Receives its annual reply.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

In The Garden.

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad, --
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson