Analysis of Snake
David Herbert Lawrence 1885 (Eastwood, Nottinghamshire) – 1930 (Vence)
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.
Scheme | ABCDEFD GXAXHXDD AI JJKFLIDXH XA MAHL BB HM FDL XNXHCXGXH OEOEX EXE MXXKN XXN HX IXX HXXH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01111101 101110101101 111 00111011011101 111011110 0111101111110101 1 11110100011001 01110110110110011 011 01011010110 01010111010011 111111 10111110111110 100 1101111101 0110101010 1101111101101 011110110101 010111111101010 01010101 1011110101010101 10110100111010 0111010111 1111 1010001111100011100 01001111001 11101011101011 111011111 11111111010101111101 0011010010 0101010111 1110011111111010011111111101001111 1111 01110 1101011111 0101101111011101111 111110100 1101110101 1101 010111111110 01011101110111 101111 010110110101 010111 01010101111 01011111101 010101011111 011111011101 011101111011001010 0111001110110100111011 010001001010010100110 101111111 111111110 1110101 011101011010 1111111 1100111111101100101 1110011 01011011100011 11000111111010 00100010101 111101101011 1011001011110010 0111010 011111111 1111101101 1010110010 1111101 01111111101 11 01110110 0100 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 3,359 |
Words | 635 |
Sentences | 27 |
Stanzas | 17 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 8, 2, 9, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 9, 5, 3, 5, 3, 2, 3, 4 |
Lines Amount | 73 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 156 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 37 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 05, 2023
- 3:10 min read
- 76 Views
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"Snake" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7873/snake>.
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