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.
A Palæstral Study
The curves of beauty are not softly wrought;
These quivering limbs by strong hid muscles held
In attitudes of wonder, and compelled
Through shapes more sinuous than a sculptor's thought,
Tell of dull matter splendidly distraught,
Whisper of mutinies divinely quelled, –
Weak indolence of flesh, that long rebelled,
The spirit's domination bravely taught.
And all man's loveliest works are cut with pain,
Beneath the perfect art we know the strain,
Intense, defined, how deep soe'er it lies.
Not tired of gazing, but with stretchèd eyes
Made hot by radiant flames of sacrifice.
A Cricket Bowler
Two minutes' rest till the next man goes in!
The tired arms lie with every sinew slack
On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back,
And elbows apt to make the leather spin
Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin, –
In knavish hands a most unkindly knack;
But no guile shelters under this boy's black
Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin.
Two minutes only. Conscious of a name,
The new man plants his weapon with profound
Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare.
Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game:
The flung ball takes one madding tortuous bound,
And the mid-stump three somersaults in air.
The New Cricket-Ground
The loveliness of Earth is still unspent:
Her beauties, singly known, combined are strange:
And with what fondness she doth freshly range
Her ancient gems for man's new ravishment!
On this soft dew-fed tree-girt sward of Kent
The cricket-god to-day is first enthroned,
The dun herd banished, and its pasture owned
by white-clad players and their snowy tent.
The field I knew before, the lads I knew,
And oft elsewhere have watched their pleasant game;
But now an added lustre comes to view,
Familiar features look no more the same;
The new-set picture gains another hue,
And sheds another glory on its frame.
Poems are from Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems, including a reprint of Echoes from Theocritus / by Edward Austin Gill, with a critical estimate of the sonnets by the late John Addington Symonds (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1897)