Close of play :: :: University of Virginia Library

Close of play

By Norman Gale

Gale, Norman (1862-1942)

[section]

[If hours in nets and hours in games]

SAFETY FIRST

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SAFETY FIRST

Let London wait! Your round of bread
Need never be more thickly spread
With butter's leading line.
Give gold a miss! At Hove to-day
The cracks of Kent and Sussex play
The game that's trebly fine.

Confound the cash! Your eyes disclose
The daily nearness of your nose
To documents in Town.
Give greed a rest! To-day at Hove
Decline to be a City Jove
At odds with fret and frown.

Your bagging cheeks, your dulling lips,
Are danger-signals of eclipse
To gloom a bilious fate.
Financial sceptre? Toss it by,
And underneath a wealthy sky
Neglect the glittering bait!

How often, very long ago,
When runaways from Cicero,
We knew athletic peace!
A shilling was our talisman
For demi-gods. With them we ran
In thought from crease to crease.

Stiff-jointed, colourless as paste,
You sit in Town and run to waist,
A man unmanned by gold.
With boyhood stirring in the mind,
Let Cricket help your heart to find
The lad you were of old.

Pavilionward! Why slave to greet
The stethoscope of Harley Street?
Be dead to office rule,
And, rolling roycily along
The tarmac, hum that clinking song
You learnt at Harrow School!