Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems including a Reprint of Echoes from Theocritus: By Wilfred Austin Gill: With a Critical Estimate of the Sonnets by the late John Addington Symonds |
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A FOOTBALL PLAYER |
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 | Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems |  |
108
XXVII
A FOOTBALL PLAYER
If I could paint you, friend, as you stand there,
Guard of the goal, defensive, open-eyed,
Watching the tortured bladder slide and glide
Under the twinkling feet; arms bare, head bare,
The breeze a-tremble through crow-tufts of hair;
Red-brown in face, and ruddier having spied
A wily foeman breaking from the side;
Aware of him,—of all else unaware:
If I could limn you, as you leap and fling
Your weight against his passage, like a wall;
Clutch him, and collar him, and rudely cling
For one brief moment till he falls—you fall:
My sketch would have what Art can never give—
Sinew and breath and body; it would live.
| Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems | |