Longfellow’s Angler and Ice Fishing

On these short winter days, my mind sometimes departs the wild and wooly world of politics, and reaches for something more familiar, a bit of verse, a touch of Maine, the words of Longfellow.

Among the poet’s poems is one entitled “The Angler’s Song,” a short set of five verses which describe the happy, wandering thoughts of a summertime angler, a fisherman with his rod.

Reading them again today, I was reminded that – as much as one loves summer fishing – there is another kind, much done in these parts, and at this time of year across America’s northern tier.

It is ice fishing, the quiet, slow paced but always relaxing trek many of us make onto a lake to do battle with the world beneath that lake, sometimes taking home a trophy for the frying pan.

So, I carefully reread “The Angler’s Song,” in which Longfellow puts to verse a happy summer day, fishing without a worry on his river bank, letting the mind wander, which he must really have done.

Then, inspired by his warm and sunny day, I returned the favor and wrote a poem, or little matching ode, to the great sport that never gets much notice, and rarer still a poem, ice fishing.

Wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born in Portland Maine, educated at Bowdoin, where he met Nathanial Hawthorne, here is “The Angler’s Song,” which may put you in mind of warmer days!

From the river’s plashy bank,

Where the sedge grows green and rank,

And the twisted woodbine springs,

Upward speeds the morning lark

To its silver cloud – and hark!

On his way the woodman sings.

On the dim and misty lakes

Gloriously the morning breaks,

And the eagle’s on his cloud: –

Whilst the wind, with sighing, wooes

To its arms the chaste cold ooze,

And the rustling reeds pipe loud.
 
Where the embracing ivy holds

Close the hoar elm in its folds,

In the meadow’s fenny land,

And the winding river sweeps

Through its shallows and still deeps, –

Silent with my rod I stand.

But when sultry suns are high

Underneath the oak I lie

As it shades the water’s edge,

And I mark my line, away

In the wheeling eddy, play,

Tangling with the river sedge.

When the eye of evening looks

On green woods and winding brooks,

And the wind sighs o’er the lea, –

Woods and streams, – I leave you then,

While the shadow in the glen

Lengthens by the greenwood tree.

Now, in a nod to the cooler days of winter, frozen lakes, warm clothes, and ice fishing – the polar opposite of lazy lounging on a warm river bank mid-summer, here is my answer to “The Angler’s Song,” call it the “The Angler’s Winter Song,” or “An Ode to Ice Fishing,” companion to Longfellow’s summer casting. 

From the snow’s oft slides

Where the stonewall hides

And bending birches bow,

Quick appears the frozen lake

One wide, white, well-iced cake,

Cold and forbidding, calm somehow.

Across the vast expanse

Towering spirals rise and dance,

Eagles circle for fish we’ll toss,

Collars high against the gales

Dreaming of perch big as whales

North of us, the albatross

Out on January ice, windbreak finally up,

Wood unloaded, fire lit, hands on cup,

Nestled in, traps all out, we wait.

The gale attacks, windbreak shivers,

Ice now booms, cracks, lake quivers

Silent eyes on flags above the bait.

As winter’s sun now tips west,

A trap flag up, gloves, fish my guest?

Imagining a perch or pickerel even,

I haul line hard, he yanks away

Darts in the darkness, now we play.

Anger’s fun after Feast of Stephen.

In time, the sullen sun begins to sink,

White lake turns amber, gold and pink,

I pull harder on that frozen line.

Toboggan packed and soon to go,

Must land the fish on evening snow.

Breaches, what? A salmon, mine! 

And there we have it, a touch of entertainment, not a word or drop of politics, enough rhyme and reel to make you feel, like both these fishermen, you had a grand day out. So happy midwinter, and if you fish this season, happy ice fishing!

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor. BobbyforMaine.com