| Heaven |
| FISH (fly-replete, in depth of June, | |
| Dawdling away their wat’ry noon) | |
| Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear, | |
| Each secret fishy hope or fear. | |
| Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond; | |
| But is there anything Beyond? | |
| This life cannot be All, they swear, | |
| For how unpleasant, if it were! | |
| One may not doubt that, somehow, Good | |
| Shall come of Water and of Mud; | |
| And, sure, the reverent eye must see | |
| A Purpose in Liquidity. | |
| We darkly know, by Faith we cry, | |
| The future is not Wholly Dry. | |
| Mud unto mud!—Death eddies near— | |
| Not here the appointed End, not here! | |
| But somewhere, beyond Space and Time. | |
| Is wetter water, slimier slime! | |
| And there (they trust) there swimmeth One | |
| Who swam ere rivers were begun, | |
| Immense, of fishy form and mind, | |
| Squamous, omnipotent, and kind; | |
| And under that Almighty Fin, | |
| The littlest fish may enter in. | |
| Oh! never fly conceals a hook, | |
| Fish say, in the Eternal Brook, | |
| But more than mundane weeds are there, | |
| And mud, celestially fair; | |
| Fat caterpillars drift around, | |
| And Paradisal grubs are found; | |
| Unfading moths, immortal flies, | |
| And the worm that never dies. | |
| And in that Heaven of all their wish, | |
| There shall be no more land, say fish. by Rupert Brooke, from The South Seas (poem found here, after a fruitless search for "the right" poem about fish'n'chips) |

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