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 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.
Taormina, 1923
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
A lone snake arrives at the speaker's water-trough on a scorching day, and the poem unfolds as a tense meeting between two living beings who seem to share the same vulnerable need. The speaker is caught between two responses at once: the inherited human impulse to see the snake as dangerous and the more private feeling that this visitor is beautiful, dignified, and deserving of welcome. Because the scene is rendered so closely and sensuously, the snake becomes more than an animal; it becomes a presence that interrupts habit and forces the speaker to confront his own divided instincts.
The poem moves from fascination to disturbance to remorse. At first, the snake's calm drinking seems almost ceremonial, and the speaker feels honored by the encounter. Then social conditioning and masculine expectations intrude, turning admiration into shame and fear. When the speaker throws the log, he acts against the part of himself that wanted to preserve the meeting. The ending gives the poem its moral force: what lingers is not triumph over danger, but the shame of a small betrayal and the sense that the speaker has broken an encounter with "one of the lords of life."
The central tension lies between instinct and education, mercy and aggression, awe and embarrassment. The poem does not let those opposites settle neatly. Instead, it leaves the reader with the speaker's uneasy realization that cruelty can arise from social pressure as much as from malice, and that the loss is spiritual as well as ethical.
Theme
- Human instinct versus social conditioning - The poem stages a conflict between the speaker's immediate admiration for the snake and the learned command to destroy it, showing how culture can distort natural feeling.
- Awe before life - The snake is treated as a majestic presence, and the speaker repeatedly responds with respect, suggesting that living things can inspire reverence rather than only fear.
- Violence and shame - The thrown log becomes a moment of moral failure, and the speaker's later regret reveals how quickly a small act of aggression can feel degrading.
- Hospitality and trespass - The water-trough is both a practical necessity and a place of shared access, raising questions about who has the right to be there and how strangers should be received.
- Fear and masculinity - The poem links the urge to kill with ideas of manliness, exposing how violent behavior can be tied to pressure to prove oneself.
- Sacredness of the natural world - The snake is framed almost as a divine or royal figure, giving the natural world a dignity that exceeds human judgment.
Literary Devices
- Free verse - The flexible lineation mirrors the speaker's shifting thoughts and the snake's slow, unhurried movement, creating a natural conversational rhythm.
- Repetition - Repeated phrases such as the insistence on waiting and the recurring description of slowness reinforce the poem's atmosphere of suspended time.
- Imagery - Rich visual and sensory details of heat, shade, earth, and water make the encounter immediate and physical, while also heightening its emotional intensity.
- Personification - The snake is given dignified, almost human or regal qualities, which encourages the reader to see him as a conscious presence rather than a mere creature.
- Symbolic contrast - The bright water-trough and the dark fissure in the wall create a contrast between openness and hiddenness, life and the underworld.
- Internal conflict - The speaker's competing impulses are dramatized through direct self-questioning, turning the poem into a record of divided consciousness.
- Allusion - The mention of the albatross brings in a wider literary memory of guilt and burden, deepening the speaker's sense of wrongdoing.
Symbolism
- The water-trough - A shared source of nourishment that symbolizes basic life needs and the possibility of peaceful coexistence.
- The snake - More than a reptile, it represents untamed life, otherness, and a dignity the speaker recognizes but cannot fully honor.
- The pitcher - The ordinary household object marks the speaker's human routine and contrasts with the snake's elemental, instinctive presence.
- The black hole in the wall - The snake's retreat into darkness suggests the unseen depths of nature and the fear that human beings project onto them.
- The log - A blunt tool of violence, it stands for the speaker's impulsive surrender to social prejudice.
- Etna and the burning earth - The volcanic setting gives the encounter a mythic scale and connects the snake to the primal forces beneath the surface of the world.
Tone
D. H. Lawrence's tone is intensely observant, conflicted, and finally self-reproaching. He gives the snake a kind of nobility, yet he also records the pull of fear and inherited prejudice with unsparing honesty. For the reader, the mood shifts from still, sunstruck fascination to unease and then to moral discomfort, as the calm encounter gives way to a sense of irreversible loss.
Historical Context
Lawrence wrote in an era when modern poetry often moved away from strict traditional forms and toward freer, more immediate speech. That openness suits a poem built from a vivid personal encounter and a mind thinking on the page. The poem also reflects a broader early twentieth-century interest in reexamining the relationship between human beings and the natural world, especially the ways civilized habits can mask violence toward what is nonhuman.
Its ethical tension is also characteristic of Lawrence's work, which frequently questions repression, social conformity, and the cost of living against instinct. The poem belongs to a literary climate in which inner conflict, sensory detail, and symbolic landscape could all carry philosophical weight without needing an overtly abstract argument.