A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)

The opening stanza has a cordial, friendly tone. A male speaker draws the reader in by creating an intimate conversational space. The speaker asks the reader about the first’s line’s “narrow fellow”: “You may have met him? Did you not” (Line 3). This puts readers on the spot, but while they are formulating an answer, enjambment hurries them onto the next line of the poem (enjambment is a poetic line that doesn’t end in punctuated stop). The speaker isn’t waiting for an answer but instead interjects that whether the reader met the narrow fellow, certainly the reader hasn’t escaped the narrow fellow’s “notice,” which is “instant” (Line 4).

The poem gradually personifies the snake. Already a “Fellow,” the snake now “Occasionally rides,” as though it were on horseback (Lines 1-2). “Rides” gets an internal rhyme in the following stanza with “Grass divides as with a Comb” (Line 5). This rhyme offers musicality and emphasizes the human qualities of the snake, who “divides” the grass as though making a part in hair. The word is rife with other meanings, pointing out the “divide” between the humanness and animalism, a line the snake straddles as it “closes at your Feet / And opens further on—” (Lines 7-8).