Izaak Walton

Izaak Walton


Thou meek old angler, knight of hook and line!
What glorious reveries methinks were thine,
As ’neath the spreading sycamore you sat,
To find a shelter from the vernal showers;
Or wander’d in green lanes, with cheerful chat 5
Making dull days seem Pleasure’s fleeting hours!
Oh, how I love in ‘fancy free’ to roam
By purling streams, in company with thee;
O, in some ‘honest alehouse,’ see the foam
Of nut-brown ale a-mantling merrily 10
Above the goblet’s brim;—whilst thou doest sing
A quaint old song, and all the rafters ring
With merry laughter at each harmless jest,—
For of all wit with innocent is best.

‘Peter Proletarius’ aka George Markham Tweddell
[Tweddell’s Yorkshire Miscellany, p. 369, October 1846, heading
an article on Izaak Walton by January Searle]

More a writer on angling and author of biographies but also wrote an Elergy to Donne's poems.

Issac Walton's House

From Wiki
Izaak Walton (9 August 1593 – 15 December 1683) was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies that have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives. Walton was born at Stafford; the register of his baptism gives his father's name asGervase. His father, who was an innkeeper as well as a landlord of a tavern, died before Izaak was three. His mother then married another innkeeper by the name of Bourne, who would later run the Swan in Stafford.

Read more here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izaak_Walton