That Fishy Feeling

In the spring the young man’s fancy,

     (And the old man’s, too, I’m told)

Turns to thoughts of mountain streamlets,

To the lakes yet bare and cold.

Turn to thoughts of rod and hamper,

     To the new and shiny reel;

And tonight my thoughts are ditto,

     And I rather like the feel.

Tho’ I am gazing in the embers

     Still I do not see their glow;

I am looking at the regions

     Where the leaping waters flow.

And within my hands I’m holding

     Just a bending rod and reel;

And I feel a tugging, tugging,

     And I somehow like the “feel”.

March 25, 1898

Pub. in Phillips

Phonograph,

April, ‘98