Now this is a point where good livers may differ, As tastes become fixed, or opinions are stiffer; Some men prefer roasted—some doat on a fry, Or extol the sweet savor of _poisson blanc_ pie; The nice _petit patè_, this palate excites, While that on a boiled dish and _bouillon_ delights; Some smoked and some salted, some fresh and some dried, Prefer to all fish in our waters beside; And ’tis thought the main question of epicures’ look, Respects not the method so much as the cook; For, like some moral dishes that furnish a zest, Whate’er is best served up, is still thought the best. There are, in gastronomy, sages who think ’Tis not only the prime of good victuals, but drink, That all sauces spoil it, the richer the quicker, And make it insipid, except its own liquor; These move in a wild epigastric mirage, Preferring the dish _a la mode de sauvage_, By which it quells hunger and thirstiness both, First eating the fish, and then drinking the broth: We leave this unsettled for palates or pens Who glean out of hundreds their critical tens, While drawn to the board where full many a dish Is slighted to taste this American fish. The planter, who whirls through the region by steam, The Creole, who sings as he lashes his team; The merchant, the lawyer, the cit, and the beau, The proud and gustative, the poor and the low; The gay _habitant_—the inquisitive tourist, The chemic physician, the dinner-crost jurist, And even the ladies, the pride of the grove, Unite to extol it, and eat to approve. Full oft the sweet morsel, while poised on the knife, Excites a bland smile in the blooming young wife, Nor deems she a sea-fish one moment compares, But is thinking the while not of fish, but of heirs. To these it is often a casual sweet, To dine by appointment, or taste as a treat; Not so, or in mental or physical joy, Comes the sight of this fish to the _courier de bois_; That wild troubadour and his joy-loving crew, Who sings as he paddles his birchen canoe, And thinks all the hardships that falls to his lot, Are richly made up at the platter and pot. To him there’s a charm neither feeble nor vague In the mighty repast of the _grande Ticameg_;[13] And oft as he starves amid Canada snows, On dry leather lichens and _bouton de rose_, He cheers up his spirits to think he shall still Of _poisson blanc bouillon_ once more have his fill. “Oh, choice of all fishes,” he sings as he goes, “Thou art sweeter to me than the Normandy rose; And the ven’son that’s stol’n from the parks of the king, Is never, by half, so delicious a thing.”