Part 28

From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots

Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,

Behooves you then to ply your finest art.

Long time he, following cautious, scans the fly,

And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft

The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear.

At last, while haply o’er the shaded sun

Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death

With sullen plunge: at once he darts along,

Deep struck, and runs out all the lengthen’d line,

Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed,

The cavern’d bank, his old secure above,

And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool,

Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand,

That feels him still, yet to his furious course

Gives way, you, now retiring, following now,

Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage,

Till floating broad upon his breathless side,

And to his fate abandon’d, to the shore

You gayly drag your unresisting prize.”

Angling, like every other manly pastime, has had numerous assailants—some of them “men of mark,” as in the case of Lord Byron, whose “fine plirensy” in denouncing Walton and the gentle art failed not to draw down upon himself the laughter of a world. The plaint of Lord Byron runs thus:

“Then there were billiards; cards, too; but no dice,

Save in the clubs no man of honor plays—

Boats when’twas water, skating when’twas ice,

And the hard frost destroy’d the scenting days;

And angling, too, that solitary vice,

Whatever Izaac Walton sings or says;

The quaint old cruel coxcomb in his gullet,