6 If the all-ruling Power please
We live to see another May,
We'll recompense an age of these
Foul days in one fine fishing day.
7 We then shall have a day or two,
Perhaps a week, wherein to try
What the best master's hand can do
With the most deadly killing fly.
8 A day with not too bright a beam;
A warm, but not a scorching sun;
A southern gale to curl the stream;
And, master, half our work is done.
9 Then, whilst behind some bush we wait
The scaly people to betray,
We'll prove it just, with treacherous bait,
To make the preying trout our prey;
10 And think ourselves, in such an hour,
Happier than those, though not so high,
Who, like leviathans, devour
Of meaner men the smaller fry.
11 This, my best friend, at my poor home,
Shall be our pastime and our theme;
But then—should you not deign to come,
You make all this a flattering dream.
A VOYAGE TO IRELAND IN BURLESQUE.
CANTO I.
The lives of frail men are compared by the sages
Or unto short journeys, or pilgrimages,
As men to their inns do come sooner or later,
That is, to their ends, to be plain in my matter;
From whence when one dead is, it currently follows,
He has run his race, though his goal be the gallows;
And this 'tis, I fancy, sets folks so a-madding,
And makes men and women so eager of gadding;
Truth is, in my youth I was one of these people
Would have gone a great way to have seen a high steeple,
And though I was bred 'mongst the wonders o' th' Peak,
Would have thrown away money, and ventured my neck
To have seen a great hill, a rock, or a cave,
And thought there was nothing so pleasant and brave:
But at forty years old you may, if you please,
Think me wiser than run such errands as these;
Or had the same humour still run in my toes,
A voyage to Ireland I ne'er should have chose;
But to tell you the truth on 't, indeed it was neither
Improvement nor pleasure for which I went thither;
I know then you'll presently ask me for what?
Why, faith, it was that makes the old woman trot;
And therefore I think I'm not much to be blamed
If I went to the place whereof Nick was ashamed.
O Coryate! thou traveller famed as Ulysses,
In such a stupendous labour as this is,
Come lend me the aids of thy hands and thy feet,
Though the first be pedantic, the other not sweet,
Yet both are so restless in peregrination,
They'll help both my journey, and eke my relation.