Sometimes your servant scraps from table brings, 



Or meat your cook into the water flings : 



Fish sometimes yield to fish a rich repnste, 



And sons insatiate on their fathers feast. 



You grains of corn may scatter, and survey 



Your fish engag'd in battle or in playj 



Or, if in sport and shooting you delight, 



With pleasure here at home, conceal'd from sight, 



May use by turns your arrows and your gun, 



Safe from the show'rs and from the scorching sun ; 



Whether they sportive leap into the air, 



Or to the surface of the stream repair. 



Ponds for your fish wherever you provide. 



They with fresh store in spring should be supply 'd 5 



In spring the male with love's soft flames inspir'd, 



And in defiance of the water fir'd, 



Can scarce perceive the change j and, big with young, 



A num'rous breed the female bears along ! 



Now o'er the neighb'ring streams extend your nets, 

 And throw your lines, well furnish'd with deceits 5 

 Join scarlet colours, which, expos'd to view, 

 Fish thro* the water greedily pursue ; 

 And as a skilful fowler birds employs, 

 Which, by their well-known voice and treacherous noise, 

 Allure their fellows and invite to share 

 Their fate, entangled in the viscous snare; 

 So fish, when taken, other fish allure j 

 Who, seeing them, grow dauntless and secure: * 



But 



Of crystall streams, that in continuall motion 

 Bend t'ward the bosom of their mother Ocean." 



Sylvester's Du Barkis, 5th clay. 



* " Dialogo. xlviii. Of a Fissher and a lytjll Fissh. A fisshcr as he 

 fisshed he cawght a lytell fissh. and whan he \voide haue kylled him he spake 

 andsayde. O gentyll fissher haue mercy vppon me, for yfthou kyl me thou 



ihtlt 



