The Andante Of Snakes

By Arthur Symons

They weave a slow andante as in sleep,

Scaled yellow, swampy black, plague-spotted white;

With blue and lidless eyes at watch they keep

A treachery of silence; infinite

Ancestral angers brood in these dull eyes

Where the long-lineaged venom of the snake

Meditates evil; woven intricacies

Of Oriental arabesque awake,

Unfold, expand, contract, and raise and sway

Swoln heart-shaped heads, flattened as by a heel,

Erect to suck the sunlight from the day,

And stealthily and gradually reveal

Dim cabalistic signs of spots and rings

Among their folds of faded tapestry;

Then these fat, foul, unbreathing, moving things

Droop back to stagnant immobility.