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4.12: Poem: A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

  • Page ID
    87318
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    A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
    Author: Emily Dickinson

    A narrow fellow in the grass
    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,
    Yet 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.
    Yet never met this fellow,
    Attended or alone,
    Without a tighter breathing,
    And zero at the bone.

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