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THE OLD ANGLER
TWILIGHT leaned mirrored in a pool
Where willow boughs swept green and hoar,
Silk-clear the water, calm and cool,
Silent the weedy shore:
There in abstracted, brooding mood
One fishing sate. His painted float
Motionless as a planet stood;
Motionless his boat.
A melancholy soul was this,
With lantern jaw, gnarled hand, vague eye;
Huddled in pensive solitariness
He had fished existence by.
Empty his creel; stolen his bait—
Impassively he angled on,
Though mist now showed the evening late
And daylight well-nigh gone.
Suddenly, like a tongueless bell.
Downward his gaudy cork did glide;
A deep, low-gathering, gentle swell
Spread slowly far and wide.
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