There was a turtle there, plodding and slow;
From Triassic time he moved all on tiptoe.
His manner and dress a hoary tale told,
One hundred and fifty million years old!
With dinosaurs some say he ruled the earth.
Others swear he assisted at the birth
Of the love goddess as she sprang from foam.
Nay! At the world's origin great heaven's dome
Rested on his back. So says the old myth.
But little can I say or do therewith.
Two hundred-year-old turtle so loved life
On land and sea he made merry with his wife.
Yet so worn, prehistoric, slow was he
That when he took her he took, verily,
(I say so without exaggeration)
A whole month in one act of copulation!
He wore a goodly suit of armor tight,
And he could navigate by stars at night.
Five hundred pounds his weight with toothless jaw,
Seven feet long - his sight inspired awe.

Some say from Galloping Ghost he came.
I'm sorry but I do not know his name.

With him there came his cousin, a snake,
An earthly being whom many did mistake
For a god! Crooked, gaunt, and thin was he -
Strange, grotesque, out of the ordinary.
Deaf as the twig which he did resemble,
A never-blinking eye which made all tremble
Who looked on him; a ghastly hood he wore
From head to neck. And dreadful as death's door
Was it to spy this ominous hood!
To peer on him was to turn cold your blood.
Poison and every other evil thing
Did one deem him; of snakes he was the king.
When any spoke to him his savage hiss
Would rattle one to complete cowardice.
It pleased him to hold cotton in his mouth
For he had lived in desert and in drought.
His manners when he came around to eat
Were abhorrent. For he would SEIZE his meat
All of a piece! Every thing he swallowed whole,
And he could wrap his mouth around a foal.
So many in our clique were proud and tall.
Pity, he seemed to have no legs at all.
And yet the snake was worshipped, I have said -
Lord of the Universe, Supreme Godhead!

'Twas Hindeeoo, a land in which a snake
A thousand-headed cobra - did betake
Itself to an ocean all made of milk.
(I never heard a yarn quite of this ilk.)
The serpent now floats on this creamy sea
Without movement through all eternity!
Immobile on this serpent's back, a god
Lies hushed for all time. But if this seems odd,
I can inform you of temple and shrine
In which a few hundred snakes - all divine -
Around altars and towers entwine
And there on finest of foods do they dine
Left by worshippers of things serpentine.
But, dear reader, I do fear I malign
Religious beasts and do harm to my verse:
(This excess of rhyme is the cricket's curse!)
To conclude and in fairness I should tell
How our good serpent did suit himself well:
From his old mode of dress he would veer
Four or even seven times a year.
He spoke straight and narrow, not with forked tongue.
But I fear I leave his virtues unsung.