It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn

I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
ous hand, named for Death's planet through the
sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of
Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
King worshipped once
with black sheep throats cut, priests's face averted from
underground mysteries in single temple at Eleusis,

Spanish

–Eros: acaso no sentiste nunca
Piedad de las estatuas?
Se dirían crisálidas de piedra
De yo no sé qué formidable raza
En una eterna espera inenarrable.
Los cráteres dormidos de sus bocas
Dan la ceniza negra del Silencio,
Mana de las columnas de sus hombros
La mortaja copiosa de la Calma
Y fluye de sus órbitas la noche;
Victimas del Futuro o del Misterio,
En capullos terribles y magníficos
Esperan a la Vida o a la Muerte.
Eros: acaso no sentiste nunca
Piedad de las estatuas?–

Bound to your bookseller, leap to your library,
Deluge your dealer with bakshish and bribary,
Lean on the counter and never say when,
Wodehouse and Wooster are with us again.

Flourish the fish-slice, your buttons unloosing,
Prepare for the fabulous browsing and sluicing,
And quote, til you're known as the neighborhood nuisance,
The gems that illumine the browsance and sluicance.

Oh, fondle each gem, and after you quote it,
Kindly inform me just who wrote it.

Which came first, the egg or the rooster?

If Pliny, Lord High Treasurer of al
Natures exchequer shuffled in this our ball,
Peinture her richer rival did admire,
And cry'd she wrought with more almighty fire,
That judg'd the unnumber'd issue of her scrowl,
Infinite and various as her mother soul,
That contemplation into matter brought,
Body'd Ideas, and could form a thought.
Why do I pause to couch the cataract,
And the grosse pearls from our dull eyes abstract,
That, pow'rful Lilly, now awaken'd we
This new creation may behold by thee?

A RETURN TO THE COVER OF

THIS BOOK



Dear Trout Fishing in America:



I met your friend Fritz in Washington Square. He told me

to tell you that his case went to a jury and that he was acquit-

ted by the jury.

He said that it was important for me to say that his case

went to a jury and that he was acquitted by the jury,

said it again.

He looked in good shape. He was sitting in the sun. There's

an old San Francisco saying that goes: "It's better to rest in

THE PUDDING MASTER OF



STANLEY BASIN





Tree, snow and rock beginnings, the mountain in back of the

lake promised us eternity, but the lake itself was filled with

thousands of silly minnows, swimming close to the shore

and busy putting in hours of Mack Sennett time.

The minnows were an Idaho tourist attraction. They

should have been made into a National Monument. Swimming

close to shore, like children they believed in their own im-

mortality .

THE HUNCHBACK TROUT





The creek was made narrow by little green trees that grew

too close together. The creek was like 12, 845 telephone

booths in a row with high Victorian ceilings and all the doors

taken off and all the backs of the booths knocked out.

Sometimes when I went fishing in there, I felt just like a

telephone repairman, even though I did not look like one. I

was only a kid covered with fishing tackle, but in some

strange way by going in there and catching a few trout, I

WORSEWICK







Worsewick Hot Springs was nothing fancy. Somebody put some

boards across the creek. That was it.

The boards dammed up the creek enough to form a huge

bathtub there, and the creek flowed over the top of the boards,

invited like a postcard to the ocean a thousand miles away.

As I said Worsewick was nothing fancy, not like the

places where the swells go. There were no buildings around.

We saw an old shoe lying by the tub.

THE AUTOPSY OF

TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA



This is the autopsy of Trout Fishing in America as if Trout

Fishing in America had been Lord Byron and had died in

Missolonghi, Greece, and afterward never saw the shores

of Idaho again, never saw Carrie Creek, Worsewick Hot

Springs, Paradise Creek, Salt Creek and Duck Lake again.

The Autopsy of Trout Fishing in America:

"The body was in excellent state and appeared as one that