Poem by Norman Rowland Gale

Cricket in the Garden

  Before the aproned nurse arrives,
    To tell of soap and tub and sponges,
  My nephew, fierce and ruddy, drives,
    Disgraceful edges, callous lunges.
  Twenty auriculas declare
    The zeal of his peculiar magic,
  Till every aunt is in despair,
    And even Job (the cat) looks tragic.

  Down goes a tulip's noble head!
    (Poor Auntie Nell is nearly crying!)
  And now a stately stock is dead,
    And now a columbine is dying.
  Vainly the cook with female lobs
    Desires to hit the egg-box wicket;
  And not among the housemaid's jobs--
    'Tis very plain--is garden cricket.

  Whack on the bee-hive goes the ball!
    "That's six!" screams Noel to the scorer.
  A foxglove, steepled best of all,
    Now sinks beneath a flying fourer.
  Two to the lad's-love; and beyond
    The lavender just half-a-dozen;
  And TWELVE for dropping in the pond
    A rank half-volley from his cousin!

  To see my pinks give up the ghost
    Is what no longer can be suffered:
  Before I lose the scented host
    This game, like candles, must be snuffered.
  Noel, at ninety-two, not out,
    Is carried to the nursery, screaming;
  And later with a precious pout
    Lies in his bed of down and dreaming.

  There shall his Century be achieved,
    Larkspurs and tiger-lilies humbled,
  Geraniums of their fire bereaved,
    And calceolarias torn and tumbled.
  With fairy craft from dusk to dawn
    Quaint Puck himself may bowl half-volleys,
  But I have vowed, by love and lawn,
    To weed one thistle from my follies!

1. Dark Blue
2. Out
3. Quinquaginta Annos Natus
4. Star-Gazing
5. Buttered

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