The Pipe‑fish; The Sea‑gar

To smoke a herring is to make
A most lam‑en‑table mistake,
Particularly since there are
The pipe‑fish and the long Sea‑gar.
Bear this in mind when next you wish
To smoke your after‑dinner fish.

Where this text comes from

First published in How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts (1917). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-williams-wood_how-to-tell-the-birds-from-the-flowers-and-other-woodcuts, how-to-tell-the-birds-from-the-flowers.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L6.

Cite this poem

Robert Williams Wood (1868–1955). “The Pipe‑fish; The Sea‑gar.” First published in How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts (1917). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-williams-wood/the-pipe-fish-the-sea-gar/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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