Explore "Our Biggest Fish" by Eugene Field on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When in the halcyon days of old, I was a little tyke, / I used to fish in pickerel ponds for minnows and the like; / And oh, the bitter sadness with which my soul was fraught / When I rambled home at nightfall with the puny string I'd caught! / And, oh, the indignation and the valor I'd display / When I claimed that all the biggest fish I'd caught had got away!
Sometimes it was the rusty hooks, sometimes the fragile lines, / And many times the treacherous reeds would foil my just designs; / But whether hooks or lines or reeds were actually to blame, / I kept right on at losing all the monsters just the same -- / I never lost a _little_ fish -- yes, I am free to say / It always was the _biggest_ fish I caught that got away.