Win a year's free membership of The Folio Society (whatever that is) if you can identify the authors of the following pedunkle literature :

---------------------------------------------

A slim young pike, with smart fins
And grey-striped suit, a young cub of a pike
Slouching along way below, half out of sight
Like a lout on an obscure pavement

---------------------------------------------

Sudden the grey pike changes, and quivering poises for slaughter. Intense terror wakens around him, the shoals scud away, but there chances a chub unsuspecting; the prowling fins quicken, in fury he lances; and the miller that opens the hatch stands amazed at the whirl in the water.

---------------------------------------------

And all at once, 50 yards out from the margin, there was a great splash, as if a stone had been flung out into the lake; and two or threee moments later out from the falling spray and rocking water rose a swallow, struggling laboriously up, its plumage drenched, and flew slowly away. A big pike had dashed at and tried to seize it at the moment of dipping in the water, and the swallow had escaped as if by a miracle. I turned around to see if any person was near, who might by chance have witnessed so strange a thing ....

---------------------------------------------

It was as deep as England.
It held pike too immense to stir,
So immense and old that past nightfall I dared not cast
But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move

---------------------------------------------

Ya see - people don't write stuff like that about carp, do they ?

Guests - this sponsored link will vanish when you log-in. Click here to register for free.

The second extract is from "The Pike" a poem by Edmund Blunden.

Only three to go!

The 4th I found with a bit of quick Googling.
A poem about pike, fish, nature and the wonder of it all

Pike

Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads -
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: fed fry to them
Suddenly there were two. Finally one

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb -

One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them -

Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,

Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly towards me, watching.

[ 09. April 2005, 02:35 PM: Message edited by: GlennB ]

A slim young pike, with smart fins
And grey-striped suit, a young cub of a pike
Slouching along way below, half out of sight
Like a lout on an obscure pavement


D H Lawrence. 'The Fish' or 'Fish' cant remember which.

Fourth one is by Ted Hughes I think.

I've read that third bit somewhere, but can't remember just where - a piece by Arthur Ransome perhaps ?

No jokes about Swallows and Amazons if you please

Come on GlennB, you're nearly there

[ 09. April 2005, 03:26 PM: Message edited by: Vagabond ]

'I've read that third bit somewhere, but can't remember just where - a piece by Arthur Ransome perhaps ?'

I get the feeling I have too. Maybe quite recently and by an angling writer?? Also has a kind of 'Ian Niall' feel to it.

Yes, it is titled simply ; "Pike" and is from "Lupercal", published in 1972 by Faber & Faber Ltd

[ 11. April 2005, 06:02 AM: Message edited by: Vagabond ]

The Folio Society is a posh book club (Publisher).