(Trachynotus carolinus.)

Sweet Southern airs and flowery blooms
Of the magnolia's rare perfumes,
The breath of rose, the violet's scent,
In one commingled sweetness blent,
Delight me as I muse of thee,
Fair Florida, far down the sea.
Musing, I seem to tread thy glades,
The vistas of thy wood-arcades,
Where golden globes of oranges
Enrich perennial-flowering trees;
And the pineapple's ruddy cone
Gleams in the thorny thicket's zone.
I seem to track the rivulet's course
Far up its tangled journey's source,
To follow it o'er grassy meads,
Amid the jungles and the reeds,
To meet it where it joins its tide
To spreading bay or river wide,
And take the grouper, trout or bass
From ripples crystal-clear as glass.
But chief the triumph of my line
To take pompano from the brine,
The richest prize the angler knows
Where ocean rolls or river flows.
A fish with frosted silver deck'd,
With blue, resplendent colors fleck'd,
Flavor'd more richly than all schools
That haunt the shallows and the pools.
A bottom-fish, its sumptuous fare
Crustacea and the mollusk rare,
Rich food that makes the sheepshead fish
To epicure a matchless dish!
Salmon of sea and trout of brook,
Fair captive of the angler's hook,
No daintier delicacies boast
Than the pompano of the coast.