PISCATORY REMINISCENCES.
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” and so it is with angling. Some are born fishermen, some acquire the art, and it is thrust upon some by necessity. I read myself into it. My first penchant for angling was created by that prince of good fellows and good fishermen, Izaak Walton. I well remember one sunny spring morning, while reclining indolently in my little piazza with the “complete angler” open before me, I was suddenly smitten with a love for the “cool shaded stream” and the exercise of the angling rod. What a happy time of it hath the fisherman, thought I. How quietly his life passeth away; his spirits are always unruffled, and his bosom unknown to the cares that harass the rest of mankind. Here am I, always excited or depressed, and eternally ruminating upon dollars and cents, without ever allowing myself time to breathe the pure air of heaven in peace. I will turn fisherman, quoth I to myself, and immediately proceeded to purchase a rod and tackle just such as is recommended in the “complete angler,” mentally repeating all the while, one of honest old Izaak's wishes.
“I in these flowery meads would be,
These chrystal streams should solace me,
To whose harmonious babbling noise,
I with my angle would rejoice.”
Duly accoutred according to the directions of master Izaak, I wended my way with a light heart and impatient step, to the slippery banks of old Neuse, chasing and catching grasshoppers for bait, as I passed through a meadow that lay in my way. When arrived at the river I ensconced myself “secretly behind a tree,” fastened a grasshopper on my hook, and let it down to the water “as softly as a snail moves,” nothing doubting that I should soon draw forth a chub of the first water. There I sat with all the patience recommended by the “complete angler,” for two good long hours, expecting every moment to see the writhing grasshopper taken down by some monster of a chub. But nothing disturbed the poor fellow's kicking, except an impudent dragon fly that alighted on him, and sat there, floating lazily on the water and basking his bright wings in the warm sun, very prejudicially, as I thought, to Mr. Walton's manner of fishing. About this time I began to have some doubts as to the practice of master Izaak's rules for chub fishing in our uncivilized streams, and was pretty well cured of my fishing mania. I must say, though in justice to my preceptor, that I lacked one essential qualification for a fisherman—devotion, though I swore not an oath, sorely tempted as I was. This was doubtless the reason of my bad luck. After seeing the poor grasshopper make his last effort to get loose, without the least interruption from a chub, I despaired of ever being an angler, and “drew up stakes” to make for home, consoling myself with the reflection that “angling is like poetry—men are born to it.” As I trudged leisurely along I could not help thinking that I had been vastly more taken with the oddities and eccentricities of the devout old fisherman, than with the practice of his art in these unromantic regions, and inwardly assented to Swift's definition of angling—“a stick and a string, with a fool at one end and a worm at the other.” Ever since that day, I have been pointed at as the man that fished by the book, much to the gratification of my rustic neighbors, and mortification of myself.
ISRAFEL.1
BY E. A. POE.
1 And the angel Israfel who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures.—Koran.
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
Whose heart-strings are a lute:
None sing so wild—so well
As the angel Israfel—
And the giddy stars are mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love—
While, to listen, the red levin
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And all the listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
With those unusual strings.
But the Heavens that angel trod
Where deep thoughts are a duty—
Where Love is a grown god—
Where Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Thou art not, therefore, wrong
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassion'd song:
To thee the laurels belong
Best bard—because the wisest.
The extacies above
With thy burning measures suit—
Thy grief—if any—thy love
With the fervor of thy lute—
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine: but this
Is a world of sweets and sours:
Our flowers are merely—flowers,
And the shadow of thy bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I did dwell where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He would not sing one half as well—
One half as passionately—
And a loftier note than this would swell
From my lyre within the sky.