Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO A GENTLEMAN WHO INVITED ME TO GO A-FISHING, by ELIZABETH MOODY



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO A GENTLEMAN WHO INVITED ME TO GO A-FISHING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: For vacant hours of man's destructive leisure
Last Line: Chagrined and weary, if it shuns the bait?
Alternate Author Name(s): Greenly, Elizabeth
Subject(s): Fish & Fishing


FOR vacant hours of man's destructive leisure
Were sports invented of the barbarous kind;
But tempt not me to share thy cruel pleasure --
No sports are guiltless to the feeling mind.

And thou, who know'st the charms of lettered taste,
Whose treasured memory classic stores commands,
Shalt thou thy valuable moments waste,
Sauntering by streams with fish-rods in thy hands?

Shall I, who cultivate the Muse's lays,
And pay my homage at Apollo's shrine,
Shall I to torpid angling give my days,
And change poetic wreaths for fishing-line?

Sit like a statue by the placid lake,
My mind suspended on a gudgeon's fate;
Transported if the silly fish I take,
Chagrined and weary, if it shuns the bait?





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