"The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous

And the voices said to me, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But I must confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?"

Snake by D.H. Lawrence