(Taken from The Classic Hundred All Time Favorite Poems edited by William Harmon)



                                                        A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

                                                                        by

                                                               Emily Dickinson

"Charms and riddles are among the oldest of poems and they are also, in a sense, the "oldest" or earliest poems for most readers.  The point normally is to describe something without naming it.  There are riddles in the Bible, in Homer, in Old English Literature (not all solved either) and in any schoolyard or workplace.

Intrusive annotation is like a bad-breathed usher who takes you to your seat and then stays alongside you and explains everything.  Most people prefer to figure things out for themselves; that is why I have kept explanation and interpretation to a minimum.  I certainly shall not give away this riddle."
 
                                                     A narrow Fellow in the Grass
                                                     Occasionally rides -
                                                     You may have met him - did you not 
                                                     His notice sudden is -

                                                     The Grass divides as with a Comb-
                                                     A spotted shaft is seen -
                                                     And then it closes at  your feet
                                                     And opens further on -

                                                     He likes a Boggy Acre
                                                     A Floor too cool for Corn -
                                                     Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot -
                                                     I more than once at Noon
                                                     Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
                                                     Unbraiding in the Sun
                                                     When stopping to secure it
                                                     It wrinkled, and was gone -

                                                     Several of Nature's People
                                                     I know, and they know me -
                                                     I feel for them a transport
                                                     Of cordiality -

                                                     But never met this Fellow
                                                     Attended, or alone
                                                     Without a tighter breathing
                                                     And Zero at the Bone -