Snake

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) was a celebrated English novelist, poet and essayist who championed instinct, natural beauty and primitive life over the artificial, cold values of modern industrial civilization. 'Snake' is a detailed, deeply psychological narrative of a human's encounter with a wild snake at his water-trough.

The arrival of the lord of life

On a hot day of 'Sicilian July, with Etna smoking' (when the volcano was active and the heat extreme), the speaker walks down his garden steps in his pyjamas, carrying a water pitcher. Reaching his stone water-trough, he finds he is not alone: a large snake has arrived before him. It has crawled from a dark 'fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom', trailing its yellow-brown, soft-bellied body over the stone edge, and rests its throat on the trough bottom, silently sipping the dripping water through its straight gums into its long, slack body.

The conflict of education versus instinct

The speaker stands in awe, feeling like a 'second comer' who must wait his turn, and an intense psychological conflict begins. The 'voice of my education' tells him the snake must be killed: in Sicily black snakes are harmless, but golden-brown snakes are venomous, so the rational voice says, 'If you were a man, / You would take a stick and finish him off now.'

But the speaker confesses that he deeply likes the snake and feels honoured that this beautiful creature has come as a guest to drink in peace. He questions his own hesitation: was it cowardice that he dared not kill it, perversity that he longed to talk to it, or humility to feel so honoured? Despite his fear, his instinctive admiration for the snake's majesty outweighs his socialized prejudice.

The vulgar act of betrayal and regret

The snake finishes drinking, lifts its head vaguely like drinking cattle, flickers its two-forked tongue, and slowly, lazily crawls back toward the dark hole. As the speaker watches its tail disappearing into the 'horrid black hole', a sudden wave of irrational human protest and horror strikes him. He cannot bear the snake withdrawing into the dark underworld, so he puts down his pitcher, picks up a 'clumsy log of wood', and throws it violently at the water-trough with a loud clatter.

The log misses, but the noise frightens the snake, whose remaining body convulses with 'undignified haste' and writhes like lightning into the fissure. At once the speaker is struck by deep, painful regret, disgusted by his own 'paltry, vulgar, mean act', and despises the voices of his 'accursed human education'. He compares his act to the ancient mariner who shot the Albatross in Coleridge's poem, and wishes the snake would return, 'Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, / Now due to be crowned again.' He realizes he has missed a chance to connect with one of the true 'lords of life', and has a pettiness to expiate.