Fable XVIII The Angler and the Philosopher
Beside a gentle murm’ring brook
An Angler took his patient stand;
He ey’d the stream with anxious look,
And wav’d his rod with cautious hand.
The bait with nicest art was drest,
The fishes left their safe retreat;
And one more eager than the rest,
Look’d, long’d, and swallow’d the deceit.
Too late she felt the poignant smart,
Her pitying friends her fate deplore;
The Angler with well-practis’d art,
Play’d, hook’d, and drew her to the shore.
Lur’d by the beauty of the day,
The sun now sinking in the sky,
A sage pursu’d his walk that way,
And saw the bleeding victim lie.
Far in the vale of years declin’d,
He watch’d the course of nature’s law;
And thus with philosophic mind,
He moralis’d on what he saw:
“Indulge, awhile, the pensive vein,
And fix this image in your mind;
You’ve hook’d a fish; observe its pain,
And view the state of human kind.
“Fate gives us line, we shift the scene,
And jocund traverse to and fro;
Pain, sickness, still will intervene,
We feel the hook where’er we go.
“If, proudly, we our schemes extend,
And look beyond the present hour,
We find our straiten’d prospects end,
And own an over-ruling pow’r.
“Awhile we sport, awhile lament,
Fate checks the line, and we are gone;
Dragg’d from our wonted element,
To distant climes, untry’d, unknown.”