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SAI International School
Class IX - English
Module No. 25 – The Snake Trying

Brief Introduction

This small poem by WW Rose, written in unrhymed, free- verse with

unequal lines , is the poet’s plea to human beings to treat snakes in a
kind manner. Human beings generally tend to kill snakes to avoid being
bitten, but poet reveals that all snakes are not poisonous and all of

them do not harm human beings.

They harm a human being only when they think of him as a danger for
his own life. In fact, in this poem the snake becomes a victim of human
hardness. It is trying to save its own life from humans.

Summary

In this poem, a harmless green - coloured snake tries to save itself
from being hit by a person who is chasing it with a stick to kill it. The
poet says that the snake is harmless even to children. People fear

snakes and when they see one, they try to kill it with a stick. The snake
tries to save itself and hides behind the green - coloured bushes of
marshy plants growing in the water. It hides in the ripples of the water
body in order to save itself. The snake disappears behind the marshy

plants
.
Literary Devices

Rhyme Scheme- As the poem is written in free verse with lines
unequal in length and no meter, there is no rhyme scheme in the
poem

1. Transferred Epithet

A transferred epithet is an adjective is an adjective that
grammatically qualifies a noun other than the person or thing that it
is actually describing

Example: to escape the pursuing stick

Here the adjective pursuing is used with stick. But it is not intended
to show that the stick is pursuing. Actually, it is to suggest that