If it's Thursday...
...it must be National Poetry Day again. And I'm told this year's theme is Games, so I may as well go for the bleeding obvious, as Lancashire are County Champions (have I mentioned this?) and 
legionseagle gave me The Poems of Francis Thompson for my birthday in January (come to think of it, can there be a connection between these two facts? Post hoc ergo propter hoc?), and give you At Lord's.
For those unfamiliar with the work, it's an account of this match between Lancashire and Gloucestershire at Old Trafford in 1878, written in the 1900s as an excuse for why he didn't want to accept an invitation to go and see Lancashire play Middlesex at Lord's.
(If the Lord's match was this one, a few months before he died, Thompson missed a big scrap when the umpires pronounced the pitch unfit for play on the second day:
"When this was announced several of the spectators gave vent to their feelings on the wicket. A crowd gathered in front of the pavilion and the MCC Secretary eventually dispersed them by issuing free passes for the next day. MacLaren and MacGregor (the Middlesex captain) then went out to look at the pitch and, on returning to the pavilion, MacLaren issued the following statement: 'Owing to the pitch having been deliberately torn up by the public, I, as captain of the Lancashire eleven, cannot see my way to continue the game, the groundsman bearing me out that the wicket could not again be put right.'" [Peter Wynne-Thomas, The History of Lancashire County Cricket Club.] There was some doubt about whether Lancashire had ceded the match, but as Middlesex didn't turn up on the third morning it was classified as Abandoned.
But it was probably a year or two earlier.)
This version of the poem has the full title and the fourth verse, in which the Lancashire openers' nicknames, Monkey and Stonewall, replace their surnames. Most versions repeat the first verse instead.
A Rhapsodist at Lord's, by Francis Thompson
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though my own red roses there may blow;
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though the red roses crest the caps I know.
For the field is full of shades as I near the shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears on a soundless clapping host
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,
To and fro.
O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!
It is Glo'ster coming North, the irresistible,
The Sire of the Graces, long ago!
It is Gloucestershire up North, the irresistible,
And new-arisen Lancashire the foe!
A Shire so young that has scarce impressed its traces,
Ah, how shall it stand before all resistless Graces?
O little red rose, their bats are as maces
To beat thee down, this summer long ago!
This day of seventy-eight they are come up North against thee,
This day of seventy-eight, long ago!
The champion of the centuries, he cometh up against thee,
With his brethren, every one a famous foe!
The long-whiskered Doctor, that laugheth rules to scorn,
While the bowler, pitched against him, bans the day that he was born;
And G.F. with his science makes the fairest length forlorn;
They are come up from the West to work thee woe!
Somewhere still ye bide among my long-lost Northern faces,
My heroes of the past, they tell me so!
Somewhere still ye bide in my long-lost Northern places,
But dead to me with youth, long ago.
I mind me of your staunchness as I near the shadowy water,
O Stonewall, and the look of your little fair-haired daughter;
(But the years have done upon you all the unassuagable slaughter)
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,
To and fro,
O my Monkey and my Stonewall long ago!
The Poems includes five more cricket poems by Thompson, including a parody of FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam which begins:
Wake! For the Ruddy Ball has taken flight,
That scatters the slow Wicket of the Night;
And the swift Batsman of the Dawn has driven
Against the Star-spiked Rails a fiery Smite.
And if it hadn't been for Lancashire, I might have abandoned this nation and played with the light of the universe instead. But you'll have to go to Pablo Neruda for that.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
legionseagle gave me The Poems of Francis Thompson for my birthday in January (come to think of it, can there be a connection between these two facts? Post hoc ergo propter hoc?), and give you At Lord's.
For those unfamiliar with the work, it's an account of this match between Lancashire and Gloucestershire at Old Trafford in 1878, written in the 1900s as an excuse for why he didn't want to accept an invitation to go and see Lancashire play Middlesex at Lord's.
(If the Lord's match was this one, a few months before he died, Thompson missed a big scrap when the umpires pronounced the pitch unfit for play on the second day:
"When this was announced several of the spectators gave vent to their feelings on the wicket. A crowd gathered in front of the pavilion and the MCC Secretary eventually dispersed them by issuing free passes for the next day. MacLaren and MacGregor (the Middlesex captain) then went out to look at the pitch and, on returning to the pavilion, MacLaren issued the following statement: 'Owing to the pitch having been deliberately torn up by the public, I, as captain of the Lancashire eleven, cannot see my way to continue the game, the groundsman bearing me out that the wicket could not again be put right.'" [Peter Wynne-Thomas, The History of Lancashire County Cricket Club.] There was some doubt about whether Lancashire had ceded the match, but as Middlesex didn't turn up on the third morning it was classified as Abandoned.
But it was probably a year or two earlier.)
This version of the poem has the full title and the fourth verse, in which the Lancashire openers' nicknames, Monkey and Stonewall, replace their surnames. Most versions repeat the first verse instead.
A Rhapsodist at Lord's, by Francis Thompson
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though my own red roses there may blow;
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though the red roses crest the caps I know.
For the field is full of shades as I near the shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears on a soundless clapping host
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,
To and fro.
O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!
It is Glo'ster coming North, the irresistible,
The Sire of the Graces, long ago!
It is Gloucestershire up North, the irresistible,
And new-arisen Lancashire the foe!
A Shire so young that has scarce impressed its traces,
Ah, how shall it stand before all resistless Graces?
O little red rose, their bats are as maces
To beat thee down, this summer long ago!
This day of seventy-eight they are come up North against thee,
This day of seventy-eight, long ago!
The champion of the centuries, he cometh up against thee,
With his brethren, every one a famous foe!
The long-whiskered Doctor, that laugheth rules to scorn,
While the bowler, pitched against him, bans the day that he was born;
And G.F. with his science makes the fairest length forlorn;
They are come up from the West to work thee woe!
Somewhere still ye bide among my long-lost Northern faces,
My heroes of the past, they tell me so!
Somewhere still ye bide in my long-lost Northern places,
But dead to me with youth, long ago.
I mind me of your staunchness as I near the shadowy water,
O Stonewall, and the look of your little fair-haired daughter;
(But the years have done upon you all the unassuagable slaughter)
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,
To and fro,
O my Monkey and my Stonewall long ago!
The Poems includes five more cricket poems by Thompson, including a parody of FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam which begins:
Wake! For the Ruddy Ball has taken flight,
That scatters the slow Wicket of the Night;
And the swift Batsman of the Dawn has driven
Against the Star-spiked Rails a fiery Smite.
And if it hadn't been for Lancashire, I might have abandoned this nation and played with the light of the universe instead. But you'll have to go to Pablo Neruda for that.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.