THE COPPERHEAD by Bret Harte

There is peace in the swamp where the Copperhead sleeps,
Where the waters are stagnant, the white vapor creeps,
Where the musk of Magnolia hangs thick in the air,
And the lilies’ phylacteries broaden in prayer.
There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is death,
Though the mist is miasma, the upas-tree’s breath,
Though no echo wakes to the cooing of doves,-
There is peace: yes, the peace that the Copperhead loves!

Go seek him: he coils in the ooze and the drip,
Like a thong idly flung from the slave-driver’s whip;
But beware the false footstep,- the stumble that brings’
A deadlier lash than the overseer swings.
Never arrow so true, never bullet so dread,
As the straight steady stroke of that hammer-shaped head;
Whether slave or proud panther, who braves that dull crest,
Woe to him who shall trouble the Copperhead’s rest!

Then why waste your labors, brave hearts and strong men,
In tracking a trail to the Copperheads’s den?
Lay your axe to the cypress, hew open the shade,
To free sky and sunshine Jehovah has made;
Let the breeze of the North sweep the vapors away,
Till the stagnant lake ripples, the freed waters play;
And then to your heel can you righteously doom’
The Copperhead born of its shadow and gloom!

The deadly copperhead lurks in and attacks its victims from the privilege of shade. In his poem, Bret Harte utilizes a double entendre on the word copperhead and the analogy of the slave whip, prevalent in his day. Our millennium copperhead, Obama, the Sophist, also strikes at the hearts and free minds of Americans from the cover of the darkness of relativity. For Obama there is no sunshine and sky, no openness and truth. All is relative. All is done under cover of darkness. Like a true Sophist, Obama seeks only power, not truth, justice and the American way based on the freedoms of our Constitution. He cannot be ‘eliminated’ except by exposure of the enlightened. He will continue to do his ‘work’ if complacent Americans peacefully acquiesce to his rule.