In a winter room, the speaker finds a worm—pink, lank, warm—and casually ties it with a string to something nearby, leaving without much thought. Later, an unsettling discovery stops her cold: the worm has become a snake, its mottled body now “ringed with power” and still bound by the very string she used. She tries flattery, calling it fair, but the snake hisses, sensing her fear, and declares there is no cordiality between them. It then contracts into a slim, rhythmic motion and secretes itself away. Panic seizes her; she bolts, eyes fixed on the creature, and runs until she finds herself in a distant town—at which point she realizes it was all a dream.
The mood is pure nightmare, where something small and harmless warps into threat with dreamlike inevitability. Dickinson builds a creeping dread: the casual tie becomes a horrifying leash, the attempted politeness turns into a predator’s knowing hiss. The flight is breathless and endless, capturing how terror can distort space and time, leaving the dreamer shaken even after waking.