Poetry Archives

“But it isn’t playing the game,” he said,
    And he slammed his books away;
“The Latin and Greek I’ve got in my head
    Will do for a duller day.”
“Rubbish!” I cried; “The bugle’s call
    Isn’t for lads from school.”
D’ye think he’d listen? Oh, not at all:
    So I called him a fool, a fool.

Now there’s his dog by his empty bed,
    And the flute he used to play,
And his favourite bat . . . but Dick he’s dead,
    Somewhere in France, they say:
Dick with his rapture of song and sun,
    Dick of the yellow hair,
Dicky whose life had but begun,
    Carrion-cold out there.

Look at his prizes all in a row:
    Surely a hint of fame.
Now he’s finished with,—nothing to show:
    Doesn’t it seem a shame?
Look from the window! All you see
    Was to be his one day:
Forest and furrow, lawn and lea,
    And he goes and chucks it away.

Chucks it away to die in the dark:
    Somebody saw him fall,
Part of him mud, part of him blood,
    The rest of him—not at all.
And yet I’ll bet he was never afraid,
    And he went as the best of ’em go,
For his hand was clenched on his broken blade,
    And his face was turned to the foe.

And I called him a fool . . . oh how blind was I!
    And the cup of my grief’s abrim.
Will Glory o’ England ever die
    So long as we’ve lads like him?
So long as we’ve fond and fearless fools,
    Who, spurning fortune and fame,
Turn out with the rallying cry of their schools,
    Just bent on playing the game.

A fool! Ah no! He was more than wise.
    His was the proudest part.
He died with the glory of faith in his eyes,
    And the glory of love in his heart.
And though there’s never a grave to tell,
    Nor a cross to mark his fall,
Thank God! we know that he “batted well”
    In the last great Game of all.