48 The Poets and Nature. 



Scott has " Like adder darting from his coil," and Byron, 

 " As darts an angry asp." 



Sometimes there is a harmless snake, as in Joanna 

 Baillie's " Devotional Song for a Negro Child," where 

 " stingless snakes entwisted lying," are mentioned among 

 the usual features of a tropical noontide a very curious 

 effort of fancy or, as in Waller's address to " A Fair Lady 

 playing with a Snake : " 



" Thrice happy snake ! that in her sleeve 

 May boldly creep ; we dare not give 

 Our thoughts so unconfined a leave. 



Contented in that nest of snow 

 He lies, as he his bliss did kno\v, 

 And to the wood no more would go ; " 



and again, in Broome, in the poem " To a Lady," that com- 

 mences, " It is a pleasing, direful sight, At once you charm 

 us and affright." This more amiable aspect of the reptile 

 is, however, legitimately extended in the " Faery Queen," 

 where we find Cambina's " rod of peace " entwined with 

 two wedded serpents, " with one olive garland crowned." 

 This was probably emblematic of the impending reconcilia- 

 tionof the combatant heroes andtheir simultaneous espousals. 

 For "the rod which Maia's son doth wield, Wherewith the 

 hellish fiends he doth confound," which Spenser himself 

 introduces as resembling that borne by the lovely peace- 

 maker of his poem was also snake bound; and one 

 legend (though another less pleasing attaches to the staff of 

 Mercury) runs that Hermes once found two snakes fighting, 

 and, having separated them, twisted them round his caduceus, 

 or herald's staff, as typical of peace restored. At first this 

 staff was of entwisted olive branches adorned with white 

 ribands which is still the colour of peace ; but in later 

 representations of the herald divinity snakes take the place 

 of the ribands. For a different reason the wand of "the 



