Snake

Snake - meaning Summary

Confronting Nature and Conscience

The speaker encounters a snake crossing his path and observes its graceful retreat. He feels offered a courteous allowance to pass, but then contemplates throwing a stone to kill it. The poem compresses a brief moral moment: respect for a nonhuman creature conflicts with an instinct or social habit of violence. The speaker’s shame at the thought of killing captures ambivalence about dominance, mercy, and conscience in a small, charged encounter.