Who says that guys who love fishing can't be romantic?! At least they could be back in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This poem, "The Bait," is John Donne's imitation of Christopher Marlowe's classic poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." Oh yeah, did I mention that shepherds were also romantic back then?
The Bait
Come, live with me, and be my love:
And we will some new pleasures prove,
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks;
With silken lines and silver hooks.
There will the river, whisp'ring, run,
Warm'd by the eyes more than the sun;
And there, the enamel'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.
When thou wilt swim in that live bath---
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Most am'rously, to thee will swim,
Gladder to catch thee than thou him.
If thou to be seen be'st loath,
By sun or moon---thou dark'nest both;
And if mine eyes have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.
Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds;
Or treach'rously poor fish beset,
With strangling snares, or windowy net;
Let coarse bold hands, from slimy nest,
The bedded fish in banks outwrest;
Let curious traitors sleave silk flies,
To 'witch poor wand'ring fishes' eyes.
For thee, thou need'st no such deceit;
For thou, thyself, art thine own bait---
That fish, that is not catcht thereby,
Is wiser far, alas, than I.
"The Bait" by John Donne, from The Complete Angler, Isaac Walton, Chapter VII, "Observations of the Perch, And How to Fish for Him."
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