The Bait

• Come live with me, and be my love,
• And we will some new pleasures prove,
• Of golden sand, and crystal brooks,
• With silken lines and silver hooks.
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• There will the river whispering run,
• Warmed by thy eyes more than the sun.
• And there the enamoured fish will stay.
• Begging themselves they may betray.
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• When wilt thou swim in that live bath,
• Each fish, which every channel hath,
• Will amorously to thee swim,
• Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.
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• If thou, to be so seen, beest loath,
• By sun or moon, thou dark’nest both;
• And if myself have leave to see,
• I need not their light, having thee.
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• Let others freeze with angling reeds,
• And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
• Or treacherously poor fish beset
• With strangling snare, or windowy net.
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• Let course bold hand from slimy nest
• The bedded fish in banks out-wrest,
• Or curious traitors, sleave-silk flies,
• Bewitch poor fishes’ wandering eyes.
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• For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
• For thou thyself are thine own bait;
• That fish that is not catched thereby,
• Alas, is wiser far than I.