Chapter 12 — Snake

The poem is written by D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930), one of the greatest figures in 20th-century English literature. It was composed in 1923 and forms part of the Reptiles section of his collection Birds, Beasts, and Flowers.

The poem explores the conflict between civilised social conditioning and natural human instinct. The speaker instinctively admires and feels honoured by the snake, but the "voice of education" insists it must be killed. This duality reflects a broader critique of how education and social norms suppress genuine human responses to nature.

The poem is set at the speaker's water-trough in Taormina, Sicily, on a hot July afternoon with Mount Etna smoking in the background. The speaker goes to fill his pitcher and finds a golden-brown snake already drinking there.

The speaker treats the snake like a guest who arrived at the trough before him. He feels instinctively honoured by its presence and glad it came "like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough." He refers to it with "someone" rather than "something," granting it human-like dignity.

It is the internalised voice of social conditioning and civilised norms that tells the speaker the golden snake is venomous and must be killed — that not killing it would be cowardice. It represents the learned, rational response to nature that overrides instinctive respect and wonder.

As the snake begins to withdraw into its hole, the speaker is overcome by an irrational "sort of horror, a sort of protest" at its retreating. He puts down his pitcher, picks up a clumsy log, and hurls it at the trough. The act is impulsive — not calculated or brave — and he immediately regrets it as "paltry," "vulgar," and "mean."

He feels immediate, intense guilt and self-contempt: "I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! / I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education." He wishes the snake would return and acknowledges he has "something to expiate — A pettiness."

The speaker alludes to Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," in which a sailor kills an albatross — a creature of good omen — and suffers guilt and punishment. Similarly, the speaker has committed a senseless act against a majestic, harmless creature. The allusion deepens the speaker's guilt and universalises the theme of humanity's destructive impulse toward nature.

Lawrence uses rich sensory imagery: the snake is described as "yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied," drinking softly and "silently" into his "slack long body." His forked tongue flickers "like a forked night on the air." After drinking, he "looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air" — images that combine physical precision with an almost divine quality.

After throwing the log, the speaker reflects that the snake "seemed to me again like a king / Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, / Now due to be crowned again." The image suggests the snake is a majestic creature of the earth, temporarily displaced by the speaker's violence, whose true nobility will be restored.

The poem uses sibilance (soft 's' sounds in "sipped," "softly," "silently" to mimic the snake's quiet movement), simile ("as cattle do" for the snake lifting its head), repetition ("must wait, must stand and wait"), allusion (the albatross/Ancient Mariner), and vivid visual and tactile imagery throughout.

"Lords of life" refers to wild creatures like the snake — beings that embody natural life and the deeper forces of the earth. By calling the snake one of the "lords of life," the speaker acknowledges its sovereignty and laments that he missed a genuine connection with nature due to petty, conditioned behaviour.

Yes. The NCERT Class 10 English Communicative Literature Reader is available as a free PDF on cbseprepmaster.com, where you can read it online or download it chapter by chapter.