THE PLEASURES OF ANGLING. 



•■'Tie sweet to view the limpid waters dances 

 As o'er their pebbly bed they eager rush; 

 Or in the sun's effulgence brightly glance, 

 As through the mead meandering they gush ; 

 Now ringing forth rich music, now all hush, 

 While song-birds chant the ever varied lay, 

 From out the willow and o'erhanging bush : 

 O, sweet it is to thread the blithsome way, 



Clad in an angling guise, to spend a happy day 



" O, ever healthful is the mountain air, 

 And ever pleasant is the verdant glade ; 

 'Tis sweet to wander through the greenwood, whe:e 

 The sparkling current bath its passage made. 

 I love, at times, the cooling stream to wade, 

 Where brushwood dense a way will not allow ; 

 I love the arcning bowers, and sylvan shade, 

 And blossoms sweet that wave from many a bougb- 



As cautiously adown the rippling path I no. 



" How meagre seems the world of business strife, 

 Compared with pleasures which the angler knowe ; 

 A scene of toil mth disappointment rife, 

 And scarce an hour of calm and sweet repose, 

 This lovely world is made a world of woes, 

 To him whose soul is wrapped in selfish gains: 

 From manhood's prime, till life at length may close, 

 His feelings all are bound in Mammon's chains, 



And wealth at most he hoards for all his paina. " 



