196 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
creature’s tooth may presently be injected into the 
beholder’s veins to darken his life; when the fear 
is slight and momentary, and passing away gives 
place to other sensations, he is impressed by its 
wonderful quietude, and is not for the moment 
without the ancient belief in its everlastingness and 
supernatural character; and, if curiosity be too 
great, if the leaf-crackling and gravel-crunching 
footsteps approach too near, to rouse and send it 
into hiding, something of compunction is felt, as 
if an indignity had been offered: 
O thoughtless, why did I 
Thus violate thy slumberous solitude? 
In those who have experienced such a feeling as 
this at sight of the basking serpent it is most power- 
fully recalled by his extremely beautiful “ Cadmus 
and Harmonia”: 
Two bright and aged snakes, 
Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, 
Bask in the glens, and on the warm sea-shore, 
In breathless quiet after all their ills; 
Nor do they see their country, nor the place 
Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills, 
Nor the unhappy palace of their race, 
Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus any more. 
There those two live far in the Illyrian brakes, 
They had stayed long enough to see 
In Thebes the billows of calamity 
Over their own dear children rolled, 
Curse upon curse, pang upon pang, 
For years, they sitting helpless in their home, 
A grey old man and woman. 
a 5) \e, Le. . eo 
