What is serpent?

Famous quotes containing the word serpent:

“O serpent heart, hid with a flow’ring face!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

“Alas I find the Serpent old
That, twining in his speckled breast,
About the flow’rs disguis’d does fold,
With wreaths of Fame and Interest.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

“The mirror-scalèd serpent is multiplicity,
But all that run in couples, on earth, in flood or air, share God that is but three,
And could beget or bear themselves could they but love as He.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)