Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924. |
Part Two: Nature
XXIV
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| A NARROW fellow in the grass | |
| Occasionally rides; | |
| You may have met him,—did you not? | |
| His notice sudden is. | |
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| The grass divides as with a comb, | 5 |
| 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. | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| It wrinkled, and was gone. | |
| |
| Several of nature’s people | |
| I know, and they know me; | |
| I feel for them a transport | |
| Of cordiality; | 20 |
| |
| But never met this fellow, | |
| Attended or alone, | |
| Without a tighter breathing, | |
| And zero at the bone. | |
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