A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
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 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, 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.
A Narrow Fellow in the Grass - meaning Summary
Fear Within Familiar Nature
Dickinson presents a sudden, intimate encounter with a snake in a familiar grassy setting. The poem records precise natural observation—the parted grass, the spotted shaft—and a remembered childhood moment of mistaking the creature for a whip-lash. That closeness produces mixed responses: a genuine affection for other ‘‘nature’s people,’’ yet an involuntary physiological fear when facing this particular ‘‘narrow fellow.’’ The final image, summed in zero at the bone
, captures a deep, embodied dread that coexists with curiosity and the poet’s attentive awareness of her confined natural world.
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