Occasionally rides –
You may have met him? Did you not
His notice instant 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 –
But when a Boy and Barefoot
I more than once at Noon
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.
In this poem, nature can be both friendly yet menacing, but strange, ambitious, and vicious. Dickinson emphasizes that humans live in the same jungle that animals do, and that we are all sentenced to the same death and life. No matter who or what we are, the same hard facts of life and death apply equally, and we cannot change that. But only influence it.
Editor
Bee The Change 