04/09/2025
Villa Britannia is sister villa and neighbor villa to .lawrencetaormina where D.H Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived for a few years , but it is in Villa Britannia’s garden where he encounters the snake and inspires him to write a poem , ‘The Snake’.
Today there are no snakes but the garden is a perfect place to be stop, breathe and be inspired . Live history at
The Snake by Dh Lawrence
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough
before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over
the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
……. To be continued
