Turner And The Golden Snake

The orphan child Jacob Turner

Wandered here and there 

As a loafer,

Once he ignited the wrath 

Of Prince Harper.

While the prince was aiming 

To shoot a monkey.

From behind a bush Turner brayed like a donkey;

The prince had a misfire; 

The monkey was lucky.

The angry prince roared like a tiger;

His men began to search 

For the disturber.

To his presence

Proudly came Turner.

He said, “I have done a virtuous deed

By preventing you from going 

Against your father’s creed;

To kill the poor monkey 

You had no need.”

“You are too small to teach me sense,

You are arrested 

And cannot go hence;

You’ll be taken to our palace.”

Turner was tried 

And proved guilty;

The king’s Deputy prayed for pity;

But Harper’s demand 

Was cruel and nasty.

“To the Death Island 

The culprit must be sent

He must be devoured 

By the golden serpent

Let God save him 

If he thinks he is innocent.”

The Death Island 

Was a vast deserted rock

About it people feared to talk;

They thought such talk

Brought bad luck.

There lived a snake 

Like a golden thread,

But it could swallow an elephant

If inflated

Hundreds of lives it had ended.

Jacob Turner reached 

The Death Island;

Everywhere he found 

Pebbles and sand,

And pined for his dear homeland.

When came the dense dark night

A scintillating golden threat 

Came in sight.

Turner gathered a little courage to fight.

The snake had coiled itself around a tree trunk;

The day before it had eaten 

A Christian monk

Who had been arrested 

For being disorderly and drunk.

The snake uncoiled itself and approached Turner;

Its mouth opened like a burning crater

And it struggled to draw 

Into it Jacob, the loafer.

The brave boy lifted a round stone,

Hurled it into the snake’s mouth 

With caution

The reptile swallowed 

The stone with indignation.

Stone after stone Turner threw;

The size of the snake grew

In the morning it had lost

Its golden hue.

It lay like a long log of wood,

So heavy that it neither 

Turned nor moved.

Turner realized its life was doomed.

The snake died at noon,

Out of its mouth came a woman as beautiful as the Queen Moon;

Turner was changed into

A handsome youth soon.

Turner and the woman roamed together,

They decided to knock 

Some sense into Harper

Who was going to succeed 

His aged father.

The woman recounted her past

With emotion;

She was an angel without any mission;

So she disturbed a sage’s meditation.

The angry sage turned her into a snake,

On the Death Island she would remain hungry and awake.

Breakfast or lunch very rarely did she take.

Now she beseeched Turner to marry her.

A lovely chariot came from heaven with a handsome charioteer;

The charioteer declared Turner will be Harper’s Prime Minister.