Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AN ANGLER'S SOLILOQUY, by MARCUS S. C. RICKARDS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AN ANGLER'S SOLILOQUY, by                    
First Line: Bright fish, weak victim of my wiles
Last Line: Our hearts of guile beware.
Subject(s): Beauty; Death; Dreams; Fish & Fishing; Life; Dead, The; Nightmares


BRIGHT fish, weak victim of my wiles,
How comes it that my art beguiles
The wariest of thy race?
Let mine return the answer: we
Are charmed as readily as he,
And snared to our disgrace.

Some lovely morn Life's rippling stream
Divinely glistens and we dream,
Nor reck that baleful eyes,
Keen to allure, have marked our state,
And deck some bright bewitching bait
In Beauty's fairest guise.

Lo! Passion suns his splendid wings;
Or Pleasure flaunts gay burnished things
With soul-enchanting look:
Life's smiling water flashes fire;
Who thinks his throbbing heart's desire
Masks a deceitful hook?

Who reckons with the fiendish rank
That stud our mortal being's bank,
Each dangling some rare treat?
God! how they dance before our eyes,
And skirmish till our spirits rise
To front the gaudy cheat!

"Such hues, such radiant wings unfurled,
It must have flown from a true world!"
(Craft hears with bated breath;)
The vision meets our wildest hopes;
Our spirit upward darts, and opes
To drink in painted Death!

Mad Evil on the shore gives play,
And chuckles as we glide away;
Too late! yet no! -- the snare
Kind Mercy counteracts perchance:
And now when sunny wavelets dance
Our hearts of Guile beware.





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