As I was ling’ring by the river’s stream
Striving to lure the shoals of glitt’ring fish
With hook and line, methought I had a dream,
That what I caught was placed upon a dish.
No tail it had, it could not be a beast,
No wings, it could by no means be a bird.
Its flesh, when tasted, proved a luscious feast,
And yet, methought, its name I’d never heard.
Speckles it had of most enchanting hue,
An unknown foreign creature it appeared;
It might be anything, perhaps a Jew,
I almost wondered it had not a beard.
While thus I slept and dreamed, I felt a twitch
Which almost pulled my fishing rod away,
I started to my feet. Oh! what a rich
Vision of splendour in the water lay!
The creature of my dreams! most wonderful,
Struggling most violently on the hook,
I landed it with one most desperate pull,
Ere that I ventured on its form to look.
In every item it did correspond
Exactly with what I in sleep had seen,
It seemed in fact almost to go beyond
The former in the grandeur of its mean.
I scarce could fancy that there did exist
A creature which in beauty so surpassed.
I pondered o’er each fish and bird and beast,
And puzzled out its name, I thought, at last.
By thinking over Buffon’s history,
And Bewick’s Birds, and Isaak Walton’s book,
I seemed to penetrate the mystery,
The name of that which hung upon my hook.
Remembering Isaak Walton’s own instructions
And other anglers’ who have gone before us,
By algebra, and eke the help of fluxions,
I made it out, it was a Plesiosaurus!
“Is it not so?” I said unto my maid,
She wrung her hands as through the room she strode,
“Take it away! Oh master mine,” she said,
“It is, it is, it is, it is a toad!!!!!!!!”
Moral: “Don’t dream.”