The Snake

EMILY DICKINSON

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 Boy, and Barefoot —

I more than once at Noon

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 —

[Recited 17 August 2017]

Sonnet 18.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

[Recited 21 July 2017]