First of all remember that we would never know what exactly the poet is trying to mention and non of the comments can said to be ‘wrong’
Great black snake represents the aborigin people in Australia and the person who gets scared of this snake is an English occupier. The word 'black' is simply you can understand that it means black people and snake is a wild animal who lives on their own land but humans are the occupiers and the writer at the same time fears and admires the snake while the snake 'fled' which mean the snake is also afraid of the people. As you can understand in present time, English people have started moving to Australia in order to get that place and the aborigins, the original people of Australia is being ignored at the same time we admire them but this admire is so extreme and unnecessary that we make them feel like they're wild animals. And if you ever go to Australia, you would see that the tour guides would show the local people of Australia, the aborigins with their hands and we would admire them but we will never chat with them or have any talk between as we are scared and this is also the way we treat the wild animals.
İn the first stanza, we can see a perfect Picture of the atmosphere. The sky is in ‘gentlest’ way despite when the person sees that ‘great’ ‘black’ snake, we can understand that with using the word ‘great’, person admires the snake. But why is the word ‘black’ is used? As you can understand the color black represents darkness which humans fear. Also don’t we talk about racism, the ‘black’ and white people.
We treat the black people as the same way, we act like they’re aliens, like they’re different from us and also we show an unnecessary amount of admire which makes them more