Freeverse
Public-domain poetry, pleasantly readable
Non omnis moriar

A narrow fellow in the grass

by Emily Dickinson · Explore poems

  1. A narrow fellow in the grass
  2. Occasionally rides;
  3. You may have met him, -- did you not,
  4. His notice sudden is.
  5.  
  6. The grass divides as with a comb,
  7. A spotted shaft is seen;
  8. And then it closes at your feet
  9. And opens further on.
  10.  
  11. He likes a boggy acre,
  12. A floor too cool for corn.
  13. Yet when a child, and barefoot,
  14. I more than once, at morn,
  15.  
  16. Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
  17. Unbraiding in the sun, --
  18. When, stooping to secure it,
  19. It wrinkled, and was gone.
  20.  
  21. Several of nature's people
  22. I know, and they know me;
  23. I feel for them a transport
  24. Of cordiality;
  25.  
  26. But never met this fellow,
  27. Attended or alone,
  28. Without a tighter breathing,
  29. And zero at the bone.

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