Snares

“ She seemed the muse of that sweet spot,
The lady of the plain,
And all was dull where she was not,
Till we met there again.
EVENING 'T is evening: the black snail has got on his track,
And gone to its nest is the wren,
And the packman snail, too, with his home on his back,
Clings to the bowed bents like a wen.
The shepherd has made a rude mark with his foot
Where his shadow reached when he first came,
And it just touched the tree where his secret love cut
Two letters that stand for love's name. ”

“ It has its opportunity to utter itself. The Snore is the Voice of the Soul! And not only the Soul of the individual but of the Soul of the race. All the experiences of man, in his ascent from the mire to his present altitude, are retained in the Subconscious Mind—his fights, his struggles, his falls, his recoveries. And his dreams and nightmares are racial memories of these things. Snores are the language in which he expresses them. Interpret the Snore, and you have the psychic history of the ascent of man from Caliban to Shakespeare! ”

“ I could not see round to the arbour under the big chestnut-tree—or where the arbour was—with its processioning groups of ghosts; nor the thickets of syringa bushes, the scent of which has never come to my nose without the suggestion of this place to my mind, and never will. The nose is as sensitive to poetic impressions as the eye with its rose-coloured spectacles, if not more so. ”

“ A sneer gathers about the corners of her rosy mouth, and her eyes dwell upon him for an instant with an expression of intense contempt; then she shrugs her snowy shoulders, leans back in her chair, takes up the cards that lie before her, and rapidly sorts them. ”

“ Frown above the waterfalls
⁠Silver and cold;
⁠Timelessly old:
⁠Not that way.
Not toward Death, who, stranger, fairer,
Than any siren turns his head—
Than sea-couched siren, arched with rain-bows,
Where knell the waves of her ocean bed. ”

“ Now long years have passed away, Sirens are a myth they say, But you still find them none the less, singing today in modern dress Just the same they set their snare, sweetly smiling, false and fair, Turn a deaf ear when you are near, or upon the reef you'll come to grief. ”

“ Sweep, glorious wings, adown the wind; fly, swallow, to the west;
Before thee, life and liberty; behind, a ruined nest.
Blow, freshening breeze, sweep, rapid wing, for all the winds are thine,
The nest is only clay.
The rapid wings were stretched in flight, the swallow sped away,
And left its nest beneath the eaves, the much-loved bit of clay,
Turned with the sun, to go where’er the happy sun might shine,
And passed into the day.
p. 10II.
THE SUMMONS. A thousand year is nought to prayer,
One day, so God it will:
So the chapel fair, in God’s clear air,
Looks calmly from its hill ”

“ Παγις signifies a net, trap, gin, snare, spring, or pit dug in the ground filled with sharp stakes, and slightly covered over; so that when a man, or any animal, steps upon it, he tumbles in, and is taken or destroyed. Such a snare is that into which those who will be rich must necessarily fall. ”

“ With all this learning upon Noses running perpetually in my father's facy—with so many family prejudices—and ten decads of such tales running on for ever along with them—how was it possible with such exquisite—was it a true nose?—That a man with such exquisite feelings as my father had, could bear the shock at all below stairs—or indeed above stairs, in any other posture, but the very posture I have described. ”

“ The old white snails were the first persons of distinction in the world, that they knew; the forest was planted for their sake, and the manor-house was there that they might be boiled and laid on a silver dish. ”

“ King Nasrulla. The Lord of the Sky rises to look on the gardens where the nightingales have been singing.
Nourmahal. But when he finds that the nightingales are silent, he passes to other gardens.
King Nasrulla. Following the song, as I follow the lisp of spring in your voice, the flutter of the wings of birds in the branches when buds are swelling.
Nourmahal. It is the flutter of wings and the song that you care for; it is not the bird. ”

“ To sleepy nestlings, then the south winds pass,
And close with fingers soft the pansies' eyes.
Upon the wings of dreams they're borne along
To loving arms that rock them all the night,
And fairy voices soothe their sleep with song,
Till they are waked by kisses of the light. ”

“ To the Sirens first shalt thou come, who bewitch all men, whosoever shall come to them. Whoso draws nigh them unwittingly and hears the sound of the Siren's voice, never doth he see wife or babes stand by him on his return, nor have they joy at his coming; but the Sirens enchant him with their clear song. ”

“ Every moment our feet are caught in a fresh snare ;
Yea, each one of us, though he be a falcon or Simurgh!
Thou dost release us every moment, and straightway
We again fly into the snare, O Almighty One!
Sleep of the body the soul's awakening.
Every night Thou freest our spirits from the body
And its snare, making them pure as rased tablets.
Every night spirits are released from this cage,
And set free, neither lording it nor lorded over.
At night prisoners are unaware of their prison,
At night kings are unaware of their majesty. ”

“ Gazing upon a Snail, one believes that he finds the prophesying goddess sitting upon the tripod. What majesty is in a creeping Snail, what reflection, what earnestness, what timidity and yet at the same time what firm confidence! Surely a Snail is an exalted symbol of mind slumbering deeply within itself.
The old artists must have felt this signification, as in many of their representations they have introduced a Snail. One can hardly think, that in so doing they wished to express such common and lascivious ideas, as are at present manifested openly or secretly by our daily enjoyments. ”

“ And, as when a bird has entangled its leg in a snare, which the cunning fowler has concealed, and perceives that it is held fast, it beats its wings, and, fluttering, tightens the noose with its struggles ”

“ Here and there stood an apple and a plum-tree, or else one never would have thought that it was a garden; all was burdocks, and there lived the two last venerable old snails.
They themselves knew not how old they were, but they could remember very well that there had been many more; that they were of a family from foreign lands, and that for them and theirs the whole forest was planted. ”

“ In The New Sirens, which fine as it is in parts is feeble as a whole, he seems to express, with obscure length, the gloom, satiety, and sorrow of the soul in which mere pleasure ends, the reckless following of impulse after impulse. ”

“ From the root snar numerous terms have been formed in imitation of sound (see also schnarren and schnurren) ; comp. Du. snorren, ‘to hum, whiz, chirp,’ E. to snarl, and snurls, ‘nostrils,’ and in the non-Teut. ”

“ Great snails crawled upon the tufts of rank grass wet with the autumnal dews that the sun had failed to dry, and upon the glistening hart's-tongue ferns, and they looked just the kind of snails that witches would collect to make a hell-broth. ”

“ Lest limbs be reddened and rent—I spring the trap that is set—As I loose the snare you may glimpse me there—For surely you shall forget! Row nearer, Mole, nearer to the reeds! It is hard to catch, and grows each minute fainter. ”

“ Eager each close recess. Why glean they thus
Those scanty blades of herbage? Do they hide,
And nourish carefully some tender lamb,
Last of the flock? No! no! Their wasted brows
A stronger need bespeak. And there he goes,
A poor snail-gatherer, from whose eye, perchance,
Speaks forth the blood of Pericles.
But lo!
The cry of sudden skirmish, and sharp war,
Peals out at distance. ”

“ You unsuspectingly lean over and hold a piece of paper at the orifice, and it is rudely and violently snatched away, to the tune of a harsh indrawn snarl, a sound just as though a giant had sharply drawn his breath in between his teeth. ”

“ String, a shoe-lace, a buckskin thong, or even a strip of clothing may be used as a snare. There are many ways of making a rabbit snare, but the simplest is the best. The essentials are, first, the snare—an ordinary running noose; second, a twitch-up—that is a branch bent down or a pole set in the crotch of a sapling. The snare is fast to the end of the pole, and spread open in a well worn runway. ”

“ Sketches from Designs by Mr. Dagley.
Sketch the Second.
Love touching the Horns of a Snail, which is
shrinking from his hand.
Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible,
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails. ”

“ I hate a height, and as my poor old doddering horse backed towards the precipice every time that he was bitten by a fly, or that I screamed at the sight of a snake, I was rather too literally between the devil—the serpent—and the deep sea—the abyss. ”

“ If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. ”

“ But, my dear father, what would, you call a tall, dry creature, growling and snarling, with hands and feet like a man, a face like a nut-cracker, and a nose—great heavens, what a nose!—as long as this knife, and red as a brick! ”

“ The relentless mouth, with its snag-tooth, the pinched nostrils, the long, sloping nose, the eyes scaled like those of a snake, present a type of extravagant melancholy even more detestable than that of the English king. ”

“ As he stood irresolutely sobbing, one ache of loneliness and homesickness and fear, he heard the call of a human voice and his name, the voice coming to him high above the wind, with its own note of terrorized anguish. ”

“ DII.
[The snail scoops out hollows, little rotund chambers, in limestone, for its residence. This habit of the animal is so important in its effects, as to have attracted the attention of geologists, and Dr. Buckland alluded to it at the meeting of the British Association in 1841. See Chambers' 'Popular Rhymes,' p. 43. The following rhyme is a boy's invocation to the snail to come out of such holes.]
Snail, snail, come out of your hole,
Or else I will beat you as black as a coal.
DIII.
Sneel, snaul,
Robbers are coming to pull down your wall ”

“ It has about it the suggestion of a face, leering and horrible, with set features that half emerge and half conceal themselves in the gnarling of the bark—such a face as a man may see peering after him out of the darkness when he passes, tip-toe, through the depths of an ancient forest at midnight. ”

“ Norton and his daughters in all these exchanges of courtesy; and if I cared little for the visiting, I greatly enjoyed the drives in the swiftly-gliding sleigh over the gleaming snow; while, instead of leaves, the trees above our heads were hung with icicles, sparkling and flashing in the sunshine, like the ruby and emerald fruit and foliage of eastern story; and the long rhythmical chimes of our sleigh bells echoing through the arches of the trees, were the only sounds, save our own laughter, that broke the silence of those ancient woods. ”

“ The hard, set pose devoid of grace, the bent, dried ears once ever on the alert, the glassy, artificial eyes in sockets once tenanted by living balls of fire that glowed in the darkness of the night—all are unreal and expressionless. ”

“ For two hours the guests ate; their faces red, their elbows wide, the perspiration beading their foreheads. All around the table one saw the same incessant movement of jaws and heard the same uninterrupted sound of chewing. ”

“ Loops and festoons threatened to lasso and hang us at times, and whilst our eyes were engaged in watching for the dangers threatening us above our feet would be caught in some vegetable snare which the genii of the forest had spread for the intruder man. ”

“ Finally,—not to multiply, as one might do indefinitely, such illustrations of our writer’s singular simplicity and artlessness,—he even notes being “mightily troubled” with snoring in his sleep, a statement which I have reserved as a kind of climax, since I find the allegation of snoring to be about the last that sensitive humanity is willing to bear. Charge a man with theft, if you will; but, as you value your life, do not suggest that he snores. ”

“ After what seemed like a long walk, he sighted his third snail and turned left. For a moment he considered speaking to the snail, remembering that in all the stories he'd heard speech was standard equipment for all forms of life in fairyland, but he refrained because of the petulant look on the snail's face. ”

“ Corresponding to Middle Low German snore, Anglo-Saxon snoru, Middle English snore (obsolete in English) , Old Frisian snore, Old Icelandic snor, snør, ‘daughter-in-law’ (Gothic *snuzô, feminine, is by chance not recorded) . A common Aryan term for ‘daughter-in-law’ (compare also other terms common to Aryan for degrees of relationship, such as Sohn, Tochter, &c.) , in the Aryan form snusã (Sanscrit snušã, Old Slovenian snŭcha) , and Aryan snusū̆s, in Latin nurus (for snusus) , Greek νυός (for *σνυσύς) . ”

“ A terrific roar was born out of the womb of inter-stellar silence—a roar that smote the eardrums of those who heard, that pressed ponderously against the heart and whipped the blood into throat and nostrils and eyes. ”

“ It was sand that was weighing her down; heavy yellow sand; she could hear it trickling into the [228] crevices and chinks and joints of her body; hear it like water among the reeds ... hear herself falling asleep.
And knew that before dawn she would awake, purged of her merciful weariness. Wake to the knowledge of a world without Stuart. ”

“ Snowy with foam, with lightning sparks ablaze.
From the black rocks ascend the syrens' lays.
They rest and view the moon with tearful eyes;
From hair and maiden-breasts the water flies,
With scales their hips are bright as rainbow-rays. ”