The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang :: :: University of Virginia Library

In the mountains and meadows of Greece,
In the holy, the delicate air,
When Pan was the piper of peace,
When the satyrs were all debonair,
In the days dear to old Lemprière,
The Graces would frolic and bound.
Our Graces are still, we declare,
The best men in England, all round!

Though the season of midsummer cease
The blossom of Hellas to bear,
Though the critics, a cohort of geese,
Deny that dame Venus is fair,
The Graces, at least are ‘all there’,
And no better bats to be found,
And at point, or at long-leg, or square,
The best men in England, all round!

May Gilbert abide in the crease!
And the bowling of Fred may it scare!
And the slows of the coroner tease
The colonists hugely that dare!
Go smite them, ye brethren, nor spare!
Till the glades of St. John's Wood resound
With the cheers that are surely your share,
The best men in England, all round!

Envoy

Old Glostershire, cast away care,
And go in for a new county ground.
Green mother of cricketers rare,
The best men in England, all round!

The three brothers whose prowess at cricket was the pride of Gloucestershire.

A Ballade of Mourning

1878

[_]

(The Australians at Lord's)

The glories of the ball and bat,
Alas! are unsubstantial things;
Fate lays the stoutest wicket flat,
Nor spares the game's anointed kings.
Look on these ‘duck's-eggs’—ranged in strings;
Hark to that shout—a losing cheer!
Ah me! (the question soothes and stings)
Where are the scores of yester-year?

I'll wear a willow round my hat
This day of days for many springs,
And sitting where the patriarch sat,
Spend the sad hours in murmurings
That fortune should have spread her wings
And sought the lower hemisphere,
Singing, as melancholy sings,
‘Where are the scores of yester-year?’

The stump of Grace is taken—pat!
Vain is the sceptre Hornby swings;
Webbe, Ridley, Hearne—on this and that
The bowlers' craft destruction brings.
Fatal and strange, like stones from slings,
Are Spofforth's ‘fasts’, and Boyle's. Oh, dear!
Lord's with the lamentation sings,
‘Where are the scores of yester-year?’

Envoy

Prince, though I know how fortune flings
Her darts, and how they disappear,
This thought my bosom racks and wrings—
Where are the scores of yester-year?

The Old Cricketer's Lament

Ah, known or unknown playfellows
Whom still the old Pavilion hears
Serenely critical of slows,
And wise with all the weight of years—
Men who perchance remember Mynn,
(Of these there are not very many)
And Powys' pace and Butler's spin,
And Francis, Ottaway, and Kenney.
Can you recall a year like this?
A year of rain, a year of woe?
How many catches did we miss!
Was cricket ever half so slow!
Could that gray Bishop —he who played
So gallantly in'27—
Have seen such dire fiascos made
In all his years, by our Eleven?
Nay, let the seasons come and fleet,
Let us be missed from field and town,
Let ancient cricketers who meet
Hint that our wickets have gone down;
They shall not see, they shall not weep
Such weather and such strokes of fate,
As we who sad and slowly creep
From Lord's this awful '88.

Bishop Charles Wordsworth of St. Andrews.

Death in June

For Cricketers Only

June is the month of Suicides

Why do we slay ourselves in June,
When life, if ever, seems so sweet?
When ‘moon’, and ‘tune’, and ‘afternoon’,
And other happy rhymes we meet;
When strawberries are coming soon?
‘Why do we do it?’ you repeat!

Ah, careless butterfly! to thee
The strawberry seems passing good;
And sweet, on music's wings, to flee
Amid the waltzing multitude,
And revel late—perchance till three—
For love is monarch of thy mood!

Alas, to us no solace shows
For sorrows we endure—at Lord's,
When Oxford's bowling always goes
For ‘fours’ for ever to the cords—
Or more, perhaps, with ‘overthrows’;
These things can pierce the heart like swords.

And thus it is though woods are green,
Though mayflies down the Test are rolling;
Though sweet, the silver showers between,
The finches sing in strains consoling,
We cut our throats for very spleen,
And very shame of Oxford's bowling.

Brahma

[_]

(After Emerson)

If the wild bowler thinks he bowls,
Or if the batsman thinks he's bowled,
They know not, poor misguided souls,
They too shall perish unconsoled.
I am the batsman and the bat,
I am the bowler and the ball,
The umpire, the pavilion cat,
The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all.

Ballade of Dead Cricketers

Ah, where be Beldham now, and Brett,
Barker, and Hogsflesh, where be they?
Brett, of all bowlers fleetest yet
That drove the bails in disarray?
And Small that would, like Orpheus, play
Till wild bulls followed his minstrelsy?
Booker, and Quiddington, and May?
Beneath the daisies, there they lie!

And where is Lambert, that would get
The stumps with balls that broke astray?
And Mann, whose balls would ricochet
In almost an unholy way
(So do baseballers ‘pitch’ to-day);
George Lear, that seldom let a bye,
And Richard Nyren, grave and gray?
Beneath the daisies, there they lie!

Tom Sueter, too, the ladies' pet,
Brown, that would bravest hearts affray;
Walker, invincible when set,
(Tom, of the spider limbs and splay);
Think ye that we could match them, pray,
These heroes of Broad-halfpenny,
With Buck to hit, and Small to stay?
Beneath the daisies, there they lie!

Envoy

Prince, canst thou moralize the lay?
How all things change below the sky!
Of Fry and Grace shall mortals say,
‘Beneath the daisies, there they lie!’

So Nyren tells us. [A. L.]

To Helen

(After seeing her bowl with her usual success.)

St. Leonard's Hall.

Helen, thy bowling is to me
Like that wise Alfred Shaw's of yore,
Which gently broke the wickets three:
From Alfred few could smack a four:
Most difficult to score!

The music of the moaning sea,
The rattle of the flying bails,
The gray sad spires, the tawny sails—
What memories they bring to me,
Beholding thee!

Upon our old monastic pitch,
How sportsmanlike I see thee stand
The leather in thy lily hand,
O Helen of the yorkers, which
Are nobly planned!

Ballade of Cricket

To T. W. L.

The burden of hard hitting: slog away!
Here shalt thou make a ‘five’ and there a ‘four’,
And then upon thy bat shalt lean, and say,
That thou art in for an uncommon score.
Yea, the loud ring applauding thee shall roar,
And thou to rival Thornton shalt aspire;
When lo, the Umpire gives thee ‘leg before’—
‘This is the end of every man's desire!’

The burden of much bowling, when the stay
Of all thy team is ‘collared’, swift or slower,
When ‘bailers’ break not in their wonted way,
And ‘yorkers’ come not off as here-to-fore;
When length balls shoot no more—ah never more!
When all deliveries lose their former fire,
When bats seem broader than the broad barn-door—
‘This is the end of every man's desire!’

The burden of long fielding, when the clay
Clings to thy shoon in sudden shower's downpour,
And running still thou stumblest; or the ray
Of blazing suns doth bite and burn thee sore,
And blind thee till, forgetful of thy lore,
Thou dost most mournfully misjudge a ‘skyer’,
And lose a match the fates cannot restore—
‘This is the end of every man's desire!’

Envoy

Alas, yet liefer on youth's hither shore
Would I be some poor player on scant hire,
Than king among the old, who play no more,—
‘This is the end of every man's desire!’

[A hope for the hopeless lips to frame]

[_]

Verse written by A. L. in a copy of ‘XXII Ballades in Blue China’, 1880, given to C. J. L. by A. L.

A hope for the hopeless lips to frame,
'Tis, oh, for a hard-hit innings of Game!
A prayer unheard that the wild wind blows,
'Tis, oh, for an over of Ridley's slows!

W. H. Game scored 109 for Oxford v. Cambridge in 1876.

Captain Oxford Eleven in 1875 and won the match v. Cambridge by six runs by putting himself on to bowl lobs and taking two wickets at the end of the innings. 1875 is known to cricketers as Ridley's Year.