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;
Yet when a boy and barefoot,
I more than once at noon
Have passed, I thought, a whiplash
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.