THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 199 
Even dying he cannot stay away; the fascina- 
tion of the lost power is too strong on him; even 
dying he rises and goes forth, creeping from tree to 
tree, to the familiar sunlit green spot of earth, 
where 
Bewildered at the pool he lies, 
And sees as through a serpent’s eyes; 
his tawny, trembling hand still fingering, his feeble 
lips still quivering, on the useless flute. He cannot 
draw the old potent music from it: 
The witching air 
That tamed the snake, decoyed the bird, 
Worried the she-wolf from her lair. 
It is all fantasy, a mere juggling arrangement 
of brain-distorted fact and ancient fiction; the 
essence of it has no existence in Nature and the 
soul for the good naturalist, who dwells in a glass 
house full of intense light without shadow; but 
the naturalists are not a numerous people, and for 
all others the effect is like that which Nature itself 
produces on our twilight intellect. It is snaky in 
the extreme; reading it we are actually there in 
the bright smiling sunshine; ours is the failing 
spirit of the worn-out old man, striving to drown 
the hissing sounds of death in our ears, as of a 
serpent that hisses. But the lost virtue cannot be 
recovered; our eyes too 
are swimming in a mist 
That films the earth like serpent’s breath; 
and the shadows of the waving boughs on the 
sward appear like hollow, cast-off coils rolled before 
