Two Fishers

One morning when Spring was in her teens,         A morn to a poet's wishing,     All tinted in delicate pinks and greens,         Miss Bessie and I went fishing.     I in my rough and easy clothes,         With my face at the sun-tan's mercy;     She with her hat tipped down to her nose,         And her nose tipped, vice versa.     I with my rod, my reel, and my hooks,         And a hamper for lunching recesses;     She with the bait of her comely looks,         And the seine of her golden tresses.     So we sat us down on the sunny dike,         Where the white pond-lilies teeter,     And I went to fishing like quaint old Ike,         And she like Simon Peter.     All the noon I lay in the light of her eyes,         And dreamily watched and waited,     But the fish were cunning and would not rise,         And the baiter alone was baited.     And when the time of departure came,         My bag hung flat as a flounder;     But Bessie had neatly hooked her game,         A hundred-and-fifty-pounder.