ENGLISH POETS ON FISHING. 121 



" Oh my beloved nymph ; fair Dove ; 

 Princess of rivers, how I love 

 Upon thy flowery banks to lie ; 



And view thy silver stream, 

 When gilded by a summer's beam, 

 And in it all thy wanton fry 



Playing at liberty 

 And, with my angle, upon them 



The all of treachery 

 I ever learnt, industriously to try. 



Most Midland people (as the writer observed when 

 recently paying a piscatorial visit to Shardlow, on the 

 Trent) pronounce the in Dove like the o in "rove," but 

 here Cotton makes " Dove " rhyme with " love," as ordi- 

 narily sounded. 



Another of Cotton's angling pieces begins with the 



stanza — 



" Away to the brook. 

 All your tackle outlook ; 

 Here's a day that is worth a year's wishing. 

 See that all things be right, 

 For 'tis a very spight 

 To want tools when a man goes a-fishing." 

 And further on we are hurried — 

 " A.way, then away, 

 We lose sport by delay ; 

 But first leave our sorrows behind us ; 

 If misfortune do come. 

 We are all gone from home. 

 And a-fishing she never can find us." 

 Sir Henry Wotton, Provost of Eton College, another 

 intimate friend of Walton, and an ardent angler, discoursed 

 well both in prose and poetry, of his favourite pasLime. 

 Walton quoted him in the " First Day " and elsewhere. 

 Here are two pretty stanzas : — 



" This day dame Nature seem'd in love ; 

 The lusty sap began to move ; 

 Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines ; 

 And birds had drawn their valentines. 



