The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang :: :: University of Virginia Library

An angler to an angler here,
To one who longed not for the bays,
I bring a little gift and dear,
A line of love, a word of praise,
A common memory of the ways,
By Elibank and Yair that lead;
Of all the burns, from all the braes,
That yield their tribute to the Tweed.

His boyhood found the waters clean,
His age deplored them, foul with dye;
But purple hills, and copses green,
And these old towers he wandered by,
Still to the simple strains reply
Of his pure unrepining reed,
Who lies where he was fain to lie,
Like Scott, within the sound of Tweed.

The Contented Angler

The Angler hath a jolly life
Who by the rail runs down,
And leaves his business and his wife,
And all the din of town.
The wind down stream is blowing straight,
And nowhere cast can he:
Then lo, he doth but sit and wait
In kindly company.

The miller turns the water off,
Or folk be cutting weed,
While he doth at misfortune scoff,
From every trouble freed.
Or else he waiteth for a rise,
And ne'er a rise may see;
For why, there are not any flies
To bear him company.

Or, if he mark a rising trout,
He straightway is caught up;
And then he takes his flasket out,
And drinks a rousing cup.
Or if a trout he chance to hook,
Weeded and broke is he;
And then he finds a goodly book
Instructive company.

The Last Cast

The Angler's Apology

Just one cast more! how many a year
Beside how many a pool and stream,
Beneath the falling leaves and sere,
I've sighed, reeled up, and dreamed my dream!

Dreamed of the sport since April first
Her hands fulfilled of flowers and snow,
Adown the pastoral valleys burst
Where Ettrick and where Teviot flow.

Dreamed of the singing showers that break,
And sting the lochs, or near or far,
And rouse the trout, and stir ‘the take’
From Urigil to Lochinvar.

Dreamed of the kind propitious sky
O'er Ari Innes brooding gray;
The sea trout, rushing at the fly,
Breaks the black wave with sudden spray!

Brief are man's days at best; perchance
I waste my own, who have not seen
The castled palaces of France
Shine on the Loire in summer green.

And clear and fleet Eurotas still,
You tell me, laves his reedy shore,
And flows beneath his fabled hill
Where Dian drave the chase of yore.

And ‘like a horse unbroken’ yet
The yellow stream with rush and foam,
'Neath tower, and bridge, and parapet,
Girdles his ancient mistress, Rome!

I may not see them, but I doubt
If seen I'd find them half so fair
As ripples of the rising trout
That feed beneath the elms of Yair.

Nay, spring I'd meet by Tweed or Ail,
And summer by Loch Assynt's deep,
And autumn in that lonely vale
Where wedded Avons westward sweep,

Or where, amid the empty fields,
Among the bracken of the glen,
Her yellow wreath October yields
To crown the crystal brows of Ken.

Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal!
Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide!
You never heard the ringing reel,
The music of the water side!

Though gods have walked your woods among,
Though nymphs have fled your banks along;
You speak not that familiar tongue
Tweed murmurs like my cradle song.

My cradle song—no other hymn
I'd choose, nor gentler requiem dear
Than Tweed's, that through death's twilight dim
Mourned in the latest Minstrel's ear!

Shameful Death

(The keeper speaks)

The biggest trout in the brook!
His weight it was five pound clear;
Never he'd wink at a hook,
If you fished for him half the year,
And in summer he lay where a tall flag shook
In the thin at the tail o' the weir.

He did not die by the line,
He did not fall to the fly,
Not fishing far and fine
On the stream where he used to lie,
But six bait hooks and a ball o' twine
Brought that big trout to die!

It was 'Arry from London town,
A music-hall cad, and a fast;
'Arry, and Moses Brown,
As had served before the mast,
With young George Smith, a clod-hopping clown,
Killed that big trout at last!

It's a good long while since then—
I'm a little bit stiff or so—
But last year I and my men,
Down there, where the alders grow,
Rolled 'Arry from town in the mud o' the fen,
And kicked him, and let him go!

It's long since the big trout died,
And my hair is mostly gray,
But down by the water-side
Mo bathed—on a Sabbath day!
And Lor', sir, I laughed till I nearly cried,
For we tuk his clothes away!

Piscatrix

Foot-deep in wet flowers and grasses,
O playmate of sunshine and shade!
What song has the stream as it passes?
What song does it sing to its maid?

Does it sing of the hills left behind it?
Does it sing of the moorland and mist?
Of the mosses that break it and bind it,
Of flowers that its waters have kissed?

Does it sing how it runs to the river?
Shall it greatly delight it to be
With the waters that murmur for ever
To the death of the depths of the sea?

The Salmo Irritans

A most accommodating fish
Is he who lies in stream or pot,
Who rises frequent as you wish
At Silver Doctor or Jock Scott,
Or any other fly you've got
In all the piscatory clans;
You strike, but ah! you strike him not;
He is the Salmo Irritans.

You give him the accustomed rest;
A quarter of an hour or so—
And then you cast your very best,
Your heart is throbbing, loud or low;
He rises with a splendid show
Of silver sides and fins like fans,
Perchance you think you've got him? No!
He is the Salmo Irritans.

You leave him till the eventide,
When wandering on by dub and pool
A score of other casts you've tried,
All fruitless and all beautiful;
But he still rises, calm and cool,
Who is not yours, nor any man's!
He leaves you looking like a fool—
He is the Salmo Irritans.

Envoy

Prince, wherefore comes he always short,
This demon whom the angler bans?
This is his selfish view of sport,
He is the Salmo Irritans!

The Last Chance

Within the streams, Pausanias saith,
That down Cocytus valley flow,
Girdling the gray domain of Death,
The spectral fishes come and go;
The ghosts of trout flit to and fro.
Persephone, fulfil my wish;
And grant that in the shades below
My ghost may land the ghosts of fish.

Scots Wha

Scots wha fish wi' salmon roe,
Scots wha sniggle as ye go,
Will ye stand the Bailie? No!
Let the limmer die!

Now's the day and now's the time,
Poison a' the burns wi' lime,
Fishing fair's a dastard crime,
We're for fishing free!

Introduction to Walton's Compleat Angler, p. lviii (Dent, 1896).

The Philosophy of Fly-fishing

Leave thou thy gillie, when he plays
His local flies, his early views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
His notion of the hook that pays.