flame
With scorn to know the Nation's game
Cat's-cradle; Cricket gone to rust,
My Lads

Ah, for a winged and wounding pen,
In vigour dipped, to pierce the age
When girls are athletes, not the men,
And toughness dwindles from the stage!—
When purblind poet cannot see
That in the games he wishes barred,
Eager, and hungry to be free
As when it triumphed on the sea,
The Viking spirit battles hard,
My Sons!

If you have need of flabbier times,
Colensos, Stormbergs, Spion Kops,
Tell cricketers to take to rhymes,
And smash at once the cross-bar props.
When sportsmen, tied to sport, refuse
To offer lead the loyal breast,
To tramp for miles in bloody shoes,
To smirch their souls, to crack their thews,
Then let the poet rail his best,
My Hearts!

Aye, if our social state be planned
Devoid of giant games of ball,
Macaulay's visitor will stand
The earlier on the crumbled wall.
Nerve, daring, sprightliness, and pluck
Improve by noble exercise;
The wish to soar above the ruck,
The power to laugh at dirty luck
And face defeat with sparkling eyes,
My Braves!

By George, there goes the supper-bell!
And yet your duffing Uncle Bob
Has never told you what befell
When all his team got out for blob.
So much for bad poetic gas
That gets my ancient dander up!
Well, to the banquet! What is crass
Shall deeply drown in radiant Bass
While we as Vikings greatly sup,
My Hearts!

THE TUTOR'S LAMENT.

I refuse to find attractions
In the ancient Roman native;
I am sick to death of fractions,
And of verbs that take the dative:
It is mine to be recorder
Of a boy's congested brain, Sir,
With the pitch in perfect order
And the weather like champagne, Sir!

I—the sport of conjugations—
I am cooped up as a lodger
Where I serve out mental rations
To a proudly backward dodger.
While the two of us are dreaming
Of the canvas and the creases,
Close we sit together, scheming
How to pull an ode to pieces.

Even now in London's gabble
Memory's magic tricks the senses!
Plain I hear the streamlet babble,
Smell the tar on country fences:

Down the road Miss Grey from Marlett
Skirts the fox-frequented thicket,
In her belt a rose of scarlet,
In her eyes the love of cricket.

There's my mother with her ponies
Underneath Sir Toby's beeches,
Pulling up to share with cronies
News of grapes and plums and peaches:
Many a gaffer stops to fumble
At his forelock as she passes,
While the children cease to tumble
Frocks and blouses in the grasses.

Though my body stays with duty
Here to work a sum or rider,
Mother's magnet and her beauty
Draw my soul to sit beside her!
Ah, what luck if I were able
There to play once more in flannels,
Free from all this littered table,
Virgil's farmyard, Ovid's annals!

There's a loop of leather handle
Peeping underneath the sofa!
Is tuition worth the candle
When the conscience turns a loafer?
'Tis the rich and backward Boarder
Proves indeed the Tutor's bane, Sir,
When the turf's in ripping order
And the weather like champagne, Sir!

A WIGGING.

"To throw your hands above your head
And wring your mouth in piteous wise
Is not a plan," the Captain said,
"With which I sympathise.
And with your eyes to ape a duck
That's dying in a thunderstorm,
Because you deprecate your luck,
Is not the best of form.

"The fact is, Johnson, I am tired
Of all this posing for a faint,
Because you think the stump required
Another coat of paint.
As greatly would you vex my soul,
And drag decorum from the Game,
If in the block your head you'd roll,
Or stand upon the same.

"This trick of striking attitudes,
Inelegant for men to see,
Will, to be candid, foster feuds
Between yourself and me.
On manners of the best this sport,
By right of glory, makes a call,
And he who will not as he ought
Should never play at all.

"Now Luck is lean, now Luck Is fat,
And wise men take her as she comes:
The Bowler may be sure the Bat
Will share the sugarplums.
So never wriggle, nor protest,
Nor eye the zenith in disgust,
But, Johnson, bowl your level best,
And recollect, what must be, must!"

THE TWO KINGS.

(Written for W.G. Grace's Fiftieth Anniversary.)

When Arthur and his Table Round
Thought lusty thumps the best of sport, Sir,
And cups and cuffs, for all but muffs,