Now, at the last of Winter's dreary reign,
More early morn bedecks the east again;

(a) Lay-hook fishing differs little if any thing from that described as ledger-bait in the note, page 144, of the last canto. But as it is rather differently described and practised,

And once more cheers our icy spell-bound vale:
Hail, silver-bearded FEBRUARY, hail!

In furrow'd tracts beneath the frozen plain,
Nurs'd by the snow, bursts forth the hidden grain;
And vegetation spreads throughout the meads,
O'er which the rustic peasant cheerful treads:

I shall give another direction.-At the taper end of an hazel stick, thirteen or fourteen feet long, a small crotch or reel is fastened by a piece of cord. About the crotch you wind fifteen or twenty yards of strong packthread, leaving about a yard thereof to hang loose. This loose yard of line is tied to the armed wire of the hook, after having drawn the armed wire betwixt the skin and ribs of a living roach. The bait being thus put on the hook, and the hook tied to the line, and the line gently inserted in a slit in one of the legs of the crotch, the hazel stick is fixed into the bank of the river, so that the bait may play at liberty half a yard or more under water. When a pike seizes it, he jerks the string out of the slit, and all the line drops from the reel or crotch, and gives him freedom to make for his den. In about a quarter of an hour, he swallows the fish, and is then, by proper management, easily drawn ashore.

Shelter'd beneath the shed, the lowing herds,

And in the roof's close thatch, the nestling birds
Together crowd to keep each other warm,

And there defy the rude inclement storm.
Descending snow now covers all the meads,
O'er trees and bushes its white mantle spreads;
The rustic youth in sport each other course,
And hurl the snow-ball with a dextrous force;
Beneath the shelter of a little thatch,

The old ones jest and laugh and troll the catch;
Each passes round the jug of humming ale,
The gossips tell some legendary tale:

With renovated warmth their old hearts burn,
And gladly welcome in the spring's return.
The sun, now wheeling through the Fisher's sign,
Favours my vows, his beams well omen'd shine;
ORWELL (b) imbibes the ray, the frost of night
Dissolves, and Pike with rabid rage will bite.

(b) Orwell is a Suffolk river, rising near Rattlesden, below Wellpit in that county. It receives the Gipping soon

Each river, which the Suffolk springs supply,
Shrinks to a rill before a northern eye;

Such stately streams their teeming vales o'erspread,
So wide their channel, and so deep their bed.
-Yet from his fertile urn the Orwell yields,

Waters as sweet, and bathes as lovely fields;
His deeps, his shoals, his weedy and his clear,
With game are peopled through the changeful year.
How oft, exulting, from these banks I've come,
Weary and laden to my lowly home!

E'en winter pleases here; when winter binds
The clods like iron, with its freezing winds,
Here, in defiance of the blast, I troll
For the strong Pike deep harbour'd in his hole.
This dreaded dragon of the streams I bring,
A gentle thrall, fast in my slender string:

after it has passed Stowmarket. From thence it flows to Needham, Bramford, Sproughton, Ipswich, and enters the sea by Harwich.

My whirling reel's the omen of his fate,

Whene'er his rav'nous gorge devours the bait :
Else arm'd with stouter war, my sturdy hand
Tugs, and high whirls him glitt'ring on the strand;
But Orwell listens not, although I sing-

Orwell is surely wander'd from his spring;
My lay, else, sounding through his wat❜ry court,
Instant had rais'd him to assist my sport.

But no, he hears! mark, mark, this empty reel,
A certain sign! a weighty fish I feel:

I poise him with my hand-his flesh, I guess,
Six lusty feeders very well may mess.-
Another's run-and yet another line—
This booty might a princely table dine:
That hook's abortive, but the deep gash'd bait
Shews some huge jaw reserv'd for future fate.—
Ha! whence that flutt'ring sound? A heron's wing!
Arch-felon, art thou caught? Hold, stubborn string!
The hazel he has launch'd-he mounts in air,

The wood's too pond'rous for his flight to bear.