Oh! 'twas Sad Indeed
To Watch The Downcast Faces Of Our Men
Returning From The Wickets; One By One,
Like
Patients at the gratis consultation
Of some skilled leech, they took their turn at physic.
And each came sadly homeward
With a face
Awry through inward anguish; they were pale
As ghosts of some dead but deep mourned love,
Grim with a great despair, but forced to smile.
CLAUD. Poor souls! Th' unkindest heart had bled for them.
But what came after?
HOR. Fortune turned her wheel,
And Grace, disgraced for the nonce, was bowled
First ball, and all the welkin roared applause!
As for the rest, they scored a goodly score
And showed some splendid cricket, but their deeds
Were not colossal, and our own brave Tennant
Proved himself all as good a man as they.
* * * * *
Through them we greet our Mother. In their coming,
We shake our dear old England by the hand
And watch space dwindling, while the shrinking world
Collapses into nothing. Mark me well,
Matter as swift as swiftest thought shall fly,
And space itself be nowhere. Future Tinleys
Shall bowl from London to our Christ Church Tennants,
And all the runs for all the stumps be made
In flying baskets which shall come and go
And do the circuit round about the globe
Within ten seconds. Do not check me with
The roundness of the intervening world,
The winds, the mountain ranges, and the seas -
These hinder nothing; for the leathern sphere,
Like to a planetary satellite,
Shall wheel its faithful orb and strike the bails
Clean from the centre of the middle stump.
* * * * *
Mirrors shall hang suspended in the air,
Fixed by a chain between two chosen stars,
And every eye shall be a telescope
To read the passing shadows from the world.
Such games shall be hereafter, but as yet
We lay foundations only.
CLAUD.
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