Men can live where fishes are, Leave the mountain and the star, Leave the meadow shining fair, And the sunny reach of air, Sink into the cold and dark Regions of the eel and shark, Grovel in the weeds and slime And the wrecks of olden time, Lose the thought of warm and bright And the very sense of light, Grow them fins and horny scales And the twist of fishy tails, And at length forever be Fixed and lost within the sea. Fling abroad the gospel net! We may save them even yet. Pull its kind, insistent folds Till it captures, till it holds, Till it lifts the fish again To the upper world of men, Till it places them once more In the life they knew before. What though waves are fierce and high, And the storm is in the sky, And our boat is far from land, And the harsh ropes tear the hand? Fishermen disciples we As of old in Galilee. Worn and weary, cold and wet, Cheerily we fling the net, Sweeping through the waves of woe: Men, our brothers, are below! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PUSSY-WILLOW TIME by ROBERT FROST GOAL by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TO OUR MOCKING-BIRD; DIED OF A CAT, MAY, 1878 by SIDNEY LANIER FLUTE-PRIEST SONG FOR RAIN; CEREMONIAL AT THE SUN SPRING by AMY LOWELL |