Classic Poem

Burn cedar in thy stalls; forth startling shake,
With fumes of viscid gum, the fetid snake!
Oft, underneath the massive manger bred,
The touch-repelling viper skulks his head,
Scared at the gloaming sky: the adder crawls,
Fostered in gloom and trained to sheltering walls:
The bitter plague of herds, with poisonous wound
Tainting the flock, he cherishes the ground.
Swain! snatch a stone; snatch, quick, a sapling oak,
Beat down his crest and crush him at a stroke:
While threatening to arise, his head ascends,
While his swoln throat the rattling hiss distends.
See, deep in earth he hides his recreant head;
His middle folds in loosened trailings spread;
Now the last winding of his length retires,
And drags in tardy rings its lingering spires.
Calabria's forest screens a mortal pest,
Rolling its scaly back, and towering on its breast.
Spotted with lengthening streaks his belly gleams;
And, while the fountains burst in gushing streams,
And the moist spring and showery south winds cool
The grassy earth, he haunts the bank and pool;
There ravening gluts his blackening maw, with brood
Of croaking frogs and fishes of the flood.
When heat the marshes dries and rives the ground
He leaps to land and writhes his fiery eyes around;
Haggard with thirst, he rages on his way,
Scared with the burning agony of day.
Ah, may I not beneath the open sky,
Behind some wood, on verdure; slumbering, lie
When, his cast slough abandoned in the brake,
Sleek in new youth, rolls forth the glistening snake;
Starts from his caverned eggs, or scaly young,
Soars on the sun and forks his quivering tongue!