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.
Fatma Kaya
ReplyDeleteFirstly I have mention that Snake is one of the poems that I liked most in this semester.It explains the poet’s inner conflict wonderfully. I must accept that when I first read the poem I never thought that this poem has this very meaningful theme. As we talked in class Lawrence thinks that education and social matters thought us to suppress out subconscious derives in addition to our inner motives. So in the poem Lawrence think that the poisonous snake must be killed, and that a brave man should undertake the task. This theme directly refers to Freud’s ideas which brought complex confusion to that time. Lasty I really appreciate how Lawrence handles with this matter in the ‘Snake.’
This poem is just among the masterpieces. It is applicaple to every term of the history. It has always a meaning whatever the era is. For example in American- African culture the poem reflects the suffering, the suppressed feeling of the black people. They wanted to show their feelings under the persecution of the whites.now, it was time to reflect their subconcious feelings and desire. Likewise, the poem still keeps it influence today. For instance, we can easily say that now it is turn to rise of comunists who suppressed their beliefs for a long time. The case of Kurdish people in our country also can be an example.
ReplyDeleteJiyan Taher :
ReplyDeleteSnake is a symbol of enemy, evil. In this poem snake is our inner evil and surely this is showing the inner struggle within the human mind to regard beauty but the fear of unknown. Every one of us has evil in ourselves but we should not allow this evil and we should kill it as it might be dangerous to us.
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ReplyDeleteWe see that throughout the poem,"snake" represents the "enemy". But we see snake in different situations. For example,it represents Lawrence's inner desires, he sees them as an enemy. Or it represents the snake in the Garden of Eden. It is also an enemy and tries to deceive Eve and Adam. And Lawrence thinks that his inner desires try to deceive himself, aswell.
ReplyDeleteHe also compares the snake to a god, aking and a lord of life. He seems amused by its power but he is also afraid and wants it's to e killed.
DH Lawrence preferred to write in free verse a style focused on capturing an event as it was, rather than reanalyzing it and changing its authentic quality. He believed that one’s inner feelings in circumstance are stronger than knowledge obtained through education.
ReplyDeleteSurely just by time period and social background it can not be about black vs white, even with the clear evidence you have found. Surely this is showing the inner struggle within the human mind to regard beauty but the fear of the unknown. This is shown by Lawrence's constant references to the snake "Being earth-brown, earth-golden" being rather positive while also being "from the burning bowels of the earth". Burning bowels of course relating to hell. Most people of the time were pretty scared of hell.
NUR GEDİK
ReplyDeleteEveryone has a part of himself or herself that they don’t reveal to anyone. We are afraid to show it but when it comes out we’d rather not talk about it.Sometimes it is like a snake sometimes like a bird singing.What is in our inside can only be seen or heard by us.Sometimes it is the struggle between good and evil,sometimes it is obscurity,darkness sometimes it s completely clearity. If one can learn to balance good with evil and rational with irrational behavior, one can live a healthy, honest, and productive life free from the strains.The poem says lots of things to us maybe other than what I am saying but I catch it from that perspective.Sometimes the snake in our mind or innerside of us can make our final or cause lots of harms but sometimes thats the snake that can teach us.Sometimes it is an enemy sometimes a friend to us:)
It is a good poem to display the strifes and the clash of opposites. In poem, educational and social conventions makes Lawrence think that the snake is poisonous and should be killed and that a brave man should undertake this task.HE compares snake to domesicated animals and to a human by referring snake as "somebody" and describing "him". And Lawrence compares snake to a god, a king, a lord. Shortly he seems that he feels the snake is above him.
ReplyDeleteİlknur Kaya
ReplyDeleteI think, this poem is about the dark side of the humanbeing. The snake,symbolicly,represents the conflicts in our minds.The man in the poet is debetaing between what he wants to do and what society expects of him.Although later he decides that he will stand up to society the man shows the unstability of the human mind by suddenly throwing a log at the sanake.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off."
Obviously, the speaker has a strong desire to prove himself a man, even when no one else is around.
Lastly,What bothers the man in the poem is that he knows that he doesn't want to hurt the snake but throws something at it anyhow. He does this because it has been told that real men should not be too sensitive, and his heart can't overcome his training.
in this poem, poet tries to draw our attention to the fact that everybody has an evil thing in himself. and that evil thing makes us act in a wrong way. these evil things may be fear, passion, or other things related to our inner self, our drives as well. in this poem, snake stands for those evil things inside, and by throwing log, we can suppress our inner passions, drives. we can do this only with education,of course. we learn that we can go against with our inner evil side through education. at the beginning of the poem, poet thinks that this snake will not give any harm to him. but then suddenly with the education he has got, he realizes that this snake can be dangerous for him.to my point of view,this is an awakening of human being from the darkness of ultimate power of inner drives.
ReplyDeleteI think the snake represents the dark side of the human soul. human being try to supress their dark side with educate themselves, but the poet expresses his admiration to this side.ın this poem ı like symbol of snake and expalanation of poet.
ReplyDeletechoices and conflicts in every period of our life...
ReplyDeletethe main ideaof the poem..
it's one of the most meaningful poems in this term and tells us about our inner voice and the things having to be done. throughout the life even if we try to look at the world in a different perspective, totally reflecting our characteristics, the social values, stereotype beliefs, cliches of our culture set a barrier in our brain, hindering the inner voice. and so in the end, we cannot behave according to our thoughts.always we feel some suppression on our minds. this causes to increase the monotype brains in number.
Öznur Öztürk
ReplyDeleteIn the poem two voices are struggling. In fact this is a process of which every people come across.Everyone has good and bad sides.Choice is ours.Sometimes we listen to our educated, and moral side.Sometimes we just disregard them listen to our desires and our bad side which is in our
unconscious mind.In the poem our bad side is represented by a living thing,snake.Because in general snake is known as something dangerous in the society.
In this poem, with a simple point of view, we can see that there is no difference between animals and us human beings in terms of survival needs. We are all the same. But as cited in the poem it was the poet's previous knowledge about the golden snakes and "masculine instinct" that made him kill the snake, because he will be called a coward. Even though the snake was doing nothing, and even looking at him in a manner of greeting, Lawrence killed him and regretted it later.
ReplyDeleteAnother interpretation is that the "snake" has a sexual connotation. that interpretation claims sex should be lived in a taboo-free way, ethically and healthily.
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ReplyDeleteGULNOZA
ReplyDeleteLawrence spent alot of time in Mexico and this poem reflects on Myths and Stories he must have heard while in Mexico. The snake is the lord of the underworld, and is in fact one of the most celebrated creatures in earlier Mexican Mythology. The snake is a symbol of rebirth, sheds the skin, and swallow their prey whole, powerful animals. The snake is the symbol for water and also for the sky. In some cultures the word for snake means, water, sky and also the number four. The snake is a very important part of pre-american mythology and it is important to know this about Lawrence, what he has learned about the snake in Mexico is the opposite of what his education has said, which is what the conflict in the poem is about. Nothing suggests sex in the poem, but the albatross suggests that Lawrence is linking the snake with God and like the Ancient Mariner will "wear the snake around his neck" and finally he seems to want people to understand this other view of snakes, they are the lords of life, they are fascinating creatures and do deserve their own temples, their own dances, their own gods. His pettiness is his flaw of education and he wants to expiate it. Respect Nature.
In this poem we see allegory he tells us the story of his encountering with asnake but when we look deeply he tells another thing The unconcious mind of suppressed feelings which freud calls as id appears and we supress the because of the social norms in the society. As we know that it gives people pleasure to do what they want but it can have some bad sides poet sides. Like a snake have poison.
ReplyDeleteevey human have some dark sides and does not show his or her dark side to anyone else because he thinks that he can be put out of the society. So he supress them.
Snake come sundergrounf like humans unconcios mind.