Poetical fishers try to make people believe these fallacies;
perhaps they impose on themselves; but if one would really enjoy
landscape, one should leave, not only the fly-book and the landing-net,
but the rod and reel at home. And so farewell to the dearest and fairest
of all rivers that go on earth, fairer than Eurotas or Sicilian Anapus
with its sea-trout; farewell--for who knows how long?--to the red-fringed
Gleddis-wheel, the rock of the Righ-wheel, the rushing foam of the
Gullets, the woodland banks of Caddon-foot.
The valleys of England are wide,
Her rivers rejoice every one,
In grace and in beauty they glide,
And water-flowers float at their side,
As they gleam in the rays of the sun.
But where are the speed and the spray--
The dark lakes that welter them forth,
Tree and heath nodding over their way--
The rock and the precipice grey,
That bind the wild streams of the North?
Well, both, are good, the streams of north and south, but he who has
given his heart to the Tweed, as did Tyro, in Homer, to the Enipeus will
never change his love.
P.S.--That Galloway fly--"The Butcher and Lang"--has been avenged. A
copy of him, on the line of a friend, has proved deadly on the Tweed,
killing, among other victims, a sea-trout of thirteen pounds.
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