Some Poetic Fish- Fancies. 1 3 5 



" So fishes, rising from the main, 



Can soar with moisten'd wings on high ; 

 The moisture dried, they sink again, 

 And dip their wings again to fly." 



" Sprung the flying-fish against the sun, 

 Till its dried wing relapsed from its brief height 

 To gather moisture for another flight." Byron. 



" Like those fish by sailors met, 

 Fly highest while their wings are wet." Greene. 



" Alas ! the flattering pride is o'er, 

 Like thee, awhile, the soul may soar ; 

 But erring man must blush to think, 

 Like thee, again, the soul must sink." Moore. 



The torpedo, "the benumbing fish," curiously meets with 

 more references than might have been expected. An expla- 

 nation, perhaps, is to be found in its familiarity to the 

 ancients. A galvanic shock from the torpedo was one of 

 Galen's prescriptions for rheumatics and the gout, and the 

 poets, adopting the idea of antiquity, speak of the creature 

 " delivering its opium at a distance " the notion that electric 

 fishes could discharge the fluid to a distance without any 

 conducting medium. The spine of the stinging-ray was 

 the barb of the spear that Circe gave her son, and to this day 

 in the South Seas the savage tips his arrows and harpoons 

 with them. 



Sword fishes, as the " warriors of the sea," lend a martial 

 variety to many fishy lines, and we find them in Darwin in 

 the company of "torpedoes, sharks, rays, and porpuses, 3 ' 

 pouring "their twinkling squadrons round the glittering 

 shore." 



" Our little fleet was now engaged so far, 

 That like the sword-fish in the whale they fought ; 

 The combat only seemed a civil war, 

 Till thro' their bowels we our passage wrought." Dryden. 



The shark is in Nature a thing of exceeding horror, but 

 the poets by their grisly fancies aggravate its terrors. Keats * 



