Читать книгу The Young Guard - Hornung Ernest William - Страница 2

NO Lord's this year: no silken lawn on which

A dignified and dainty throng meanders.

The Schools take guard upon a fierier pitch

Somewhere in Flanders.

Bigger the cricket here; yet some who tried

In vain to earn a Colour while at Eton

Have found a place upon an England side

That can't be beaten!

A demon bowler's bowling with his head —

His heart's as black as skins in Carolina!

Either he breaks, or shoots almost as dead

As Anne Regina;

While the deep-field-gun, trained upon your

stumps,

From concrete grand-stand far beyond the

bound'ry,

Lifts up his ugly mouth and fairly pumps

Shells from Krupp's foundry.

But like the time the game is out of joint —

No screen, and too much mud for cricket

lover;

Both legs go slip, and there's sufficient point

In extra cover!

Cricket? 'Tis Sanscrit to the super-Hun —

Cheap cross between Caligula and Cassius,

To whom speech, prayer, and warfare are all

one —

Equally gaseous!

Playing a game's beyond him and his hordes;

Theirs but to play the snake or wolf or

vulture:

Better one sporting lesson learnt at Lord's

Than all their Kultur…

Sinks a torpedoed Phoebus from our sight;

Over the field of play see darkness stealing;

Only in this one game, against the light

There's no appealing.

Now for their flares… and now at last the

stars…

Only the stars now, in their heavenly million,

Glisten and blink for pity on our scars

From the Pavilion.