Short Poems About Fishing for Anglers, Kids, and Families

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run
Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there the ‘enamour’d fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark’nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.

For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait:
That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

The airs that blew from the brink of day
Were fresh and wet with the breath of May.
I heard the babble of brown brooks falling
And golden-wings in the woodside calling.

Big drops hung from the sparkling eaves;
And through the screen of the thin young leaves
A glint of ripples, a whirl of foam,
Lured and beckoned me out from home.

My feet grew eager, my eyes grew wide,
And I was off by the brown brook’s side.
Down in the swamp-bottom, cool and dim,
I cut me an alder sapling slim.

With nimble fingers I tied my line,
Clear as a sunbeam, strong and fine.
My fly was a tiny glittering thing,
With tinsel body and partridge wing.

With noiseless steps I threaded the wood,
Glad of the sun pierced solitude.
Chattered the kingfisher, fierce and shy,
As like a shadow I drifted by.

Lurked in their watery lairs the trout,
But, silver and scarlet, I lured them out.
Wary were they, but warier still
My cunning wrist and my cast of skill.

I whipped the red pools under the beeches;
I whipped the yellow and dancing reaches.
The purple eddy, smooth like oil,
And the tail of the rapid yielded spoil.

So all day long, till the day was done,
I followed the stream, I followed the sun.
Then homeward over the ridge I went,
The wandering heart of me well content.

From the river’s plashy bank,
Where the sedge grows green and rank,
And the twisted woodbine springs,
Upward speeds the morning lark
To its silver cloud — and hark!
On his way the woodman sings.

On the dim and misty lakes
Gloriously the morning breaks,
And the eagle’s on his cloud: —
Whilst the wind, with sighing, wooes
To its arms the chaste cold ooze,
And the rustling reeds pipe loud.

Where the embracing ivy holds
Close the hoar elm in its folds,
In the meadow’s fenny land,
And the winding river sweeps
Through its shallows and still deeps, —
Silent with my rod I stand.

But when sultry suns are high
Underneath the oak I lie
As it shades the water’s edge,
And I mark my line, away
In the wheeling eddy, play,
Tangling with the river sedge.

When the eye of evening looks
On green woods and winding brooks,
And the wind sighs o’er the lea, —
Woods and streams, — I leave you then,
While the shadow in the glen
Lengthens by the greenwood tree.