FAR away in the twilight time | |
| Of every people, in every clime, | |
| Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, | |
| Born of water and air and fire, | |
| Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud | 5 |
| And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, | |
| Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, | |
| Through dusk tradition and ballad age. | |
| So from the childhood of Newbury town | |
| And its time of fable the tale comes down | 10 |
| Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, | |
| The Amphisbæna, the Double Snake! | |
| |
| Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, | |
| Consider that strip of Christian earth | |
| On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, | 15 |
| Full of terror and mystery, | |
| Half redeemed from the evil hold | |
| Of the wood so dreary and dark and old, | |
| Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew | |
| When Time was young, and the world was new, | 20 |
| And wove its shadows with sun and moon, | |
| Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn. | |
| Think of the sea’s dread monotone, | |
| Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, | |
| Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, | 25 |
| Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, | |
| And the dismal tales the Indian told, | |
| Till the settler’s heart at his hearth grew cold, | |
| And he shrank from the tawny wizard’s boasts, | |
| And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, | 30 |
| And above, below, and on every side, | |
| The fear of his creed seemed verified;— | |
| And think, if his lot were now thine own, | |
| To grope with terrors nor named nor known, | |
| How laxer muscle and weaker nerve | 35 |
| And a feebler faith thy need might serve; | |
| And own to thyself the wonder more | |
| That the snake had two heads, and not a score! | |
| |
| Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen | |
| Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil’s Den, | 40 |
| Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, | |
| Or coiled by the Northman’s Written Rock, | |
| Nothing on record is left to show; | |
| Only the fact that he lived, we know, | |
| And left the cast of a double head | 45 |
| In the scaly mask which he yearly shed. | |
| For he carried a head where his tail should be, | |
| And the two, of course, could never agree, | |
| But wriggled about with main and might, | |
| Now to the left and now to the right; | 50 |
| Pulling and twisting this way and that, | |
| Neither knew what the other was at. | |
| |
| A snake with two heads, lurking so near!— | |
| Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear! | |
| Think what ancient gossips might say, | 55 |
| Shaking their heads in their dreary way, | |
| Between the meetings on Sabbath-day! | |
| How urchins, searching at day’s decline | |
| The Common Pasture for sheep or kine, | |
| The terrible double-ganger heard | 60 |
| In leafy rustle or whir of bird! | |
| Think what a zest it gave to the sport, | |
| In berry-time, of the younger sort, | |
| As over pastures blackberry-twined, | |
| Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind, | 65 |
| And closer and closer, for fear of harm, | |
| The maiden clung to her lover’s arm; | |
| And how the spark, who was forced to stay, | |
| By his sweetheart’s fears, till the break of day, | |
| Thanked the snake for the fond delay! | 70 |
| |
| Far and wide the tale was told, | |
| Like a snowball growing while it rolled. | |
| The nurse hushed with it the baby’s cry; | |
| And it served, in the worthy minister’s eye, | |
| To paint the primitive serpent by. | 75 |
| Cotton Mather came galloping down | |
| All the way to Newbury town, | |
| With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, | |
| And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; | |
| Stirring the while in the shallow pool | 80 |
| Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, | |
| To garnish the story, with here a streak | |
| Of Latin, and there another of Greek: | |
| And the tales he heard and the notes he took, | |
| Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book? | 85 |
| |
| Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. | |
| If the snake does not, the tale runs still | |
| In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill. | |
| And still, whenever husband and wife | |
| Publish the shame of their daily strife, | 90 |
| And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain | |
| At either end of the marriage-chain, | |
| The gossips say, with a knowing shake | |
| Of their gray heads, “Look at the Double Snake! | |
| One in body and two in will, | 95 |
| The Amphisbæna is living still!” | |
| |
