Would turn to poison on his conscious lip.
H. K. White, 1785–1806.
FROM “THE COMPLETE ANGLER.”
Ven. On my word, master, this is a gallant trout; what shall we do with him?
Pisc. Marry, e’en eat him to supper: we’ll go to my hostess, from whence we came; she told me, as I was going out of door, that my brother Peter, a good angler, and a cheerful companion, had sent word he would lodge there to-night, and bring a friend with him. My hostess has two beds, and I know you and I may have the best. We’ll rejoice with my brother Peter and his friend, tell tales, or sing ballads, or make a catch, or find some harmless sport to content us, and pass away a little time without offense to God or man.
Ven. A match, good master: let’s go to that house, for the linen looks white, and smells of lavender, and I long to lie in a pair of sheets that smell so. Let’s be going, good master, for I am hungry again with fishing.
Pisc. Nay, stay a little, good scholar; I caught my last trout with a worm. Now I will put on a minnow, and try a quarter of an hour about yonder trees for another, and so walk toward our lodging. Look you, scholar, thereabout we shall have a bite presently, or not at all. Have with you, sir, o’ my word I have hold of him. Oh, it is a great loggerheaded chub; come, hang him upon that willow twig, and let’s be going. But turn out of the way a little, good scholar, toward yonder high honeysuckle hedge; there we’ll sit and sing while this shower falls so gently upon the teeming earth, and gives yet a sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant meadows.
Look! under that broad beach-tree I sat down when I was last this way a fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree, near to the brow of that primrose hill; there I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently toward their center, the tempestuous sea, yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble-stones, which broke their waves and turned them into foam; and sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs—some leaping securely in the cool shade, while others sported themselves in the cheerful sun; and saw others craving comfort from the swollen udders of their bleating dams. As I thus sat, these and other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content, that I thought, as the poet has happily expressed it,
“I was for that time lifted above earth,
And possess’d joys not promis’d in my birth.”