University of Virginia Library


43

A POINT OF VIEW

Prophets are thick in England now. They swear,
Some in delight, and some in scarlet passion,
That hunting of the fox must finish where
This sport has been so long a furious fashion.
Conceivably. The wolf in time withdrew; the boar,
Bedecked in rosemary, escaped from dishes;
And if the bullied fox is run no more,
Good Luck will grant another of my wishes.
Prophets of genuine evil can be found
Whose prevalence of bile attacks the hoary
And signal services on many a ground
Of Cricket resonant in flannelled glory.
This is the hour of artificial hares
Bamboozling dogs; of cometary Scourges
Adroit at roaring round the Dirt Track flares
Amid a mob that bets and bawls and surges.

44

This is the age of cruisers in the sky,
Of speed gone mad, of funerals in a hurry.
See to it, then, that none of us shall die
Of tedium, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Surrey!
Has County Cricket, as the prophets tell,
Only a decade left in which to dwindle
From vivid splendour such as used to swell
The veins and cause a multitude to kindle?
Forbid it, Heaven! Yet, in this age of speed,
A crucial slowness, not unlike Stonehenge's,
Is but a plan for tempting Time to breed
A brat or two by way of dark revenges.