Franz von Stuck

Or the danger may be illustrated by wild animals, for instance, a horse which throws the dreamer to the ground and kicks her in the body with his hind foot, lions, tigers, elephants with threatening trunks, and finally snakes in endless variety.

Sometimes the snake creeps into the mouth, sometimes it bites the breast like Cleopatra's legendary asp, sometimes it comes in the role of the paradisiacal snake or in the variations of Franz Stuck, whose pictures of snakes bear the significant titles Vice, Sin, Lust.

The mixture of lust and anxiety is expressed incomparably in the very atmosphere of these pictures and far more brutally indeed than in Marika's charming poem, The Maiden's First Love Song.

What's in the net? Behold, but I am afraid.