Emily Dickinson

I'm a decided fan of Ms. Dickinson.
She's wrote in an unusual manner for a woman of that time and religious upbringing. (Rather Puritan)

She died in Amherst in 1886 without any public recognition of her astounding abilities while she was alive.
It wasn't until her room was being sorted after her death that her family discovered her (literally) hidden talent.

One of my favorite of her poems isn't uncommon, but it speaks so clearly of her catching of breath at seeing a snake, that any time I've seen a snake since I recall the last line of this poem with cold clarity.

Snake

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, -did you not?
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun, -
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.