[099] Within an hour, and pacing through the forest,

[100] Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,

Lo, what befel! he threw his eye aside,

And mark what object did present itself:

[103] Under an oak, whose boughs were moss’d with age

And high top bald with dry antiquity,

105 A wretched ragged man, o’ergrown with hair,

Lay sleeping on his back: about his neck

A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself,

Who with her head nimble in threats approach’d