University of Virginia Library

TO THOMAS SATCHELL.

Friend, fellow-worker in a field where Fame
Grows scanty laurels—resolute and gay,
You bore the heat and burden of the day—
Friend, did you miss me, when the twilight came?
I stole away—forsook you, without shame—
Slipped shoes of swiftness on, and flew to see
Each home and haunt of old felicity,
The Lea, the Dove, the Fishing House—what blame?
E'en ‘Totnam Hill’ and Broxbourne's bowery leas.
Long pilgrimage! long as from Age to Youth—
Now glad, now sad, now changed and now the same,
Those cherished scenes of holiday and ease.
Friend, here am I! and not to come, in sooth,
Quite empty-handed back, I bring you .. these.

THE BI-CENTENARY.

I.

[Father of Anglers! when, two hundred years]

Father of Anglers! when, two hundred years
Agone, Death sealed thine eyes, his visage frore
Was touched—the legend tells—with pity sore.
He closed thine eyes and sealed them safe from tears,
With touch of frosty finger on their spheres,
But spared thy heart, and let its pulses beat
Unchecked. “Not death, but dreams”—he said—“O sweet
Soul, be thy portion—dreams of woods and meres,
Trout-dimpled pool, bright beck, and sighing sedge—
Dreams of old faces, comrades dear, that throng
About thee, with gay gossip, laugh and song,
In hostel, or by honeysuckle hedge.
Such dreams be thine, with endless Morn and May!”
And ceasing, the gaunt Shadow went his way.

II.

[So Fine-ear, stooping with a stedfast will]

So Fine-ear, stooping with a stedfast will,
Above thy mouldering tomb, in summer-time,
Hears still what seems a ripple or a rhyme,
Unsilenced by the centuries—hears still,
Through chink and cleft, a little babbling rill—
Then quaint discourse—Piscator's homily,
The voice we honour—Auceps' grave reply—
Venator's jest—And presently a thrill
Of music, joyous, without fret or jar—
“Come live with me and be my love”—and near,
The nightingale's sweet cadence, full and clear,
Or bay of otter-hounds from fields afar.
Old life, old sport of Lea-side and of Dove—
The life we cherish and the sport we love.

THE CABINET.

Three Sonnets suggested by the Cabinet that hung at Walton's Bed-head, now in the possession of C. Elkin Mathews, Esq., of Exeter.

I.

[Just here our Izaak must have laid the stress]

Just here our Izaak must have laid the stress
Of his true hand, full oft—just here have stood
Eying his books—Quarles, Sibbes, quaint brotherhood!
Or his own ‘Angler,’ fresh from Marriott's press.
Thus I behold him now—he turns the page
Of ‘hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton's’ strain;
His face lights up—he sees the Dove again—
Sees Pike-pool, and that pretty hermitage,
The Fishing House. He marks the trout at play,
And casts his fly—swift turns the whizzing wheel—
A plump three-pounder pants within his creel.
And now his dream is done—he turns away.
Blest Shade, from out your heaven, forgive me this,
That where your hand was laid, I leave my kiss.

II.

[We have his books—we have this relic rare—]

We have his books—we have this relic rare—
Where hides his Angle-rod? .. My fancy wings
Its way to limbos of forgotten things,
And gropes, craves, questions, vainly, for it there.
Our Izaak's Angle-rod—a priceless prize!
At his death-hour, be sure he must have turned,
To where it stood, a lingering look that yearned,
With the last effort of his glazing eyes.
Our Izaak's Angle-rod! A pearl, a crown
Of preciousness, meet for some noble hoard,
Enriched with painter's pencil, hero's sword,
Relics of Love and Worship and Renown,—
Vanished from earth—O Angle-rod, wert given
In Izaak's hand to hold by streams of Heaven?

III.

[Better than bones of Saints apocryphal]

Better than bones of Saints apocryphal,
Fictions and figments of a doting creed,
This relic of our Izaak—saint, indeed,
Was he, of the true strain—a light for all
To walk by; on his sacred fame there lies
No shadow—truest Christian, tenderest friend—
In all your Kalendar, from end to end,
Find me his peer, ye Popes and hierarchies!
And by God's throne, and by the rivers fair,
That wind and wander through the happy land—
Where souls throng thickest on the golden strand,
Beatified—in peace beyond compare,
Whose bliss is fuller than our Izaak's bliss?
What soul doth wear a whiter robe than his?

IZAAK, BY LEA-SIDE.

I walked by Lea-side, on a morn of May,—
With Izaak for my guide—my thought intent
On Izaak only, all the way I went,
A thought that woke an echo; streams at play,
Purled “Izaak, Izaak,” peering at the day;
And eke the nightingale, with pure good will,
Wove “Izaak, Izaak,” into every trill,
Making the whole air tender with his lay.
Fine scents were there for incense, so methought,
A shrine was dressed for Izaak, and I heard,
Blent with the melody of wave and bird,
A silver caroling of Angels, fraught
With bliss and benediction. From the sod
Soared the sweet pœan, circling up to God.

IZAAK AND ELIA.

Two great and good men oft have trod your ground,
Old “Totnam Hill”—one, Izaak, blythe of blee,
Armed with the Fisher's pastoral panoply,
Panier and Angle-rod, lissome and round;—
The other, Elia, studious, quaint and fine,
With lustrous eye, brooding,—one's fancy saith,—
On “spacious times of great Elizabeth,”
Peopled with retinue of Shades divine.
Izaak, I see, intent on mead and down—
On piping throstle and on blossomed spray;
But Elia's face is turned another way,
Drawn by the roar and tumult of the town.
Yet, did they meet, in sooth, those twain, what speech
Could gauge the gladness in the heart of each?

THE ‘LIVES.’

The pen, that wrote these ‘Lives,’—a poet said,—
Dropped from an angel's wing. Yes, well we know,
That Izaak dwelt in fellowship below
With angels; that for ever, round his head,
Their halo hovers, like a blessing shed.
Angel of Truth, Angel of Holiness,—
Your light it was—your sacred strength and stress—
Guided, upheld him, till his task was sped.
Angels of Love and Ruth, ye sat, meek-eyed,
Singing within his soul—that tenderest note,
That wove its witchery through each page he wrote,
Till Herbert grew divine, Donne, glorified.
Rare ‘Lives’! that whoso reads, to him is given
To pace the precincts of the courts of Heaven.

LEA AND DOVE.

Two rivers, more than most, we Anglers love—
Not Thames, not Severn, though Thames, smiling, lies,
Lapped in a sylvan-sweet, soft paradise
Of tender turf, trim garden, bowery grove—
And Severn rolls a fertile flood that fills
Its brimming pools, and in each eddy hides
The royal salmon, with its silver sides,
And surging, “makes a silence in the hills.”
Great streams! and such we honour, but more dear—
Dowered with immortal memories of old days,
Old Anglers haunting the familiar ways,
Their footprints on the sod, by lock and weir,—
Are rivers twain, that most of all we love,
The sedgy, soughing Lea, the cooing Dove.

BROXBOURNE—A PASTORAL.

Here Izaak fished, a favourite ‘swim,’ no doubt;
The river, edged with sallows, murmurs low
Its rippling reverie of the long ago,
And winds, thro' reedy reaches, in and out.
Beneath yon ‘honeysuckle hedge,’ be sure
Piscator sat, discoursing. Hush! draw near—
“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,” I hear—
And Echo takes it up, serene and pure.
See, the great ‘logger-headed chub’ come out;
The trout flits by, a shadow, and, in bands,
The little gudgeons skim the silver sands,
Unawed by Izaak's rod—a revel rout.
While Maudlin, through the meadows, within hail,
Trips to the music of her milking pail.

THE FISHING HOUSE.

What spot more honoured than this peaceful place?—
Twice honoured, truly. Here Charles Cotton sang,
Hilarious—his whole-hearted songs, that rang
With a true note, through town and country ways,
While the Dove trout—in chorus—splashed their praise.
Here Walton sat with Cotton, in the shade,
And watched him dubb his flies, and doubtless made
The time seem short, with gossip of old days.
Their cyphers are enlaced above the door,
And in each Angler's heart, firm-set and sure.
While rivers run, shall those twin names endure—
WALTON and COTTON, linked for evermore—
And ‘Piscatoribus sacrum,’—where more fit
A motto, for their wisdom, worth and wit?

VALE—BENEDICITE!

My task is done. Oh that I could have caught
The plume that dropped from that angelic wing
Into thy hand—to serve for minstrel string,
And shed diviner music, nobler thought,
More infinite honour. 'Las! my strain is nought,
Through human fleck and flaw, though well I know
No need is thine of bays around thy brow,
Or incense of vain homage. Time has brought
Thy consecration, and the world's acclaim—
Feeble and faint, of yore, but now full-blown,
A trumpet-note to make thy triumph known—
Awards thee Fame, ay, constant growth of Fame—
What more of earth? No more, since this is given—
Our blessing on thee Izaak, in thy heaven!

EPILOGUE. THE ‘COMPLEAT ANGLER.’

What, not a word for thee, O little tome,
Brown-jerkined, friendly-faced—of all my books
The one that wears the quaintest, kindliest looks—
Seems most completely, cosily at home,
Amongst its fellows. Ah! if thou couldst tell
Thy story—how, in sixteen, fifty three,
Good Master Marriott, standing at his door,
Saw Anglers hurrying—fifty—yea, three score,
To buy thee, ere noon pealed from Dunstan's bell:—
And how he stared and .. shook his sides with glee.
One story, this, which fact or fiction weaves.
Meanwhile, adorn my shelf, beloved of all—
Old book! with lavender between thy leaves,
And twenty ballads round thee on the wall.