Speaker
The speaker of the poem is revealed to be a man in the third stanza. He expresses fearful respect for a narrow fellow in the grass—the snake. He describes his boyhood encounters with him and says that now he never meets him without a feeling of physical unease. The gender of the speaker is unusual given Dickinson's tendency to make herself the de facto speaker in most of her poems.
The Narrow Fellow
"A narrow fellow in the grass" is Dickinson's playful descriptor for a snake. The poem shows the snake's movement, its behavior and effect on people. The snake is personified and given more familiarity with the lighthearted label of "fellow." However, this initial depiction proves as tricky as the "fellow" himself. The speaker's initial tone gives way to a more honest revelation of how frightened he is by the snake's elusive abilities.
