Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter.... To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous do...g, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins--that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so... are the sons of men snared in an evil time,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While he hears in every spring How the birds do chirp and sing:... Or before the hounds in cry See the hare go stealing by: Or along the shallow brook, Angling with a baited hook, See the fishes leap and play In a blessed sunny day:LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea... she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls Are their males' subjects and at their controls:... Man, more divine, the master of all these, Lord of the wide world and wild watery seas, Indued with intellectual sense and souls, Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls, Are masters to their females, and their lords: Then let your will attend on their accords.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Salmon, shad, and alewives were formerly abundant here, and taken in weirs by the Indians ... until the dam and afterward the cana...l at Billerica, and the factories at Lowell, put an end to their migrations hitherward; though it is thought that a few more enterprising shad may still occasionally be seen in this part of the river.... Perchance, after a few thousands of years, if the fishes will be patient, and pass their summers elsewhere meanwhile, nature will have leveled the Billerica dam, and the Lowell factories, and the Grass-ground River run clear again, to be explored by new migratory shoals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progr...ess.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The light gradually forsook the deep water, as well as the deeper air, and the gloaming came to the fishes as well as to us, and m...ore dim and gloomy to them, whose day is a perpetual twilight, though sufficiently bright for their weak and watery eyes. Vespers had already rung in many a dim and watery chapel down below, where the shadows of the weeds were extended in length over the sandy floor.... Meanwhile, like a dark evening cloud, we were wafted over the cope of their sky, deepening the shadows on their deluged fields.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fis...hes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »