A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

by Emily Dickinson

　　A narrow fellow in the grass

　　Occasionally rides;

　　You may have met him—did you not

　　His notice sudden 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.