The following lines were written by Butler in February, 1864, and appeared in the PRESS. They refer to a visit paid to New Zealand by a team of English cricketers, and have kindly been copied and sent to me by Miss Colborne-Veel, whose father was editor of the PRESS at the time that Butler was writing for it. Miss Colborne-Veel has further permitted to me to make use of the following explanatory note: "The coming of the All England team was naturally a glorious event in a province only fourteen years old. The Mayor and Councillors had 'a car of state'--otherwise a brake--'with postilions in the English style.' Cobb and Co. supplied a six-horse coach for the English eleven, the yellow paint upon which suggested the 'glittering chariot of pure gold.' So they drove in triumph from the station and through the town. Tinley for England and Tennant for Canterbury were the heroes of the match. At the Wednesday dinner referred to they exchanged compliments and cricket balls across the table. This early esteem for cricket may be explained by a remark made by the All England captain, that 'on no cricket ground in any colony had he met so many public school men, especially men from old Rugby, as at Canterbury.'"[To the Editor, the Press, February 15th, 1864.]
Sir--The following lines, which profess to have been written by a friend of mine at three o'clock in the morning after the dinner of Wednesday last, have been presented to myself with a request that Ishould forward them to you. I would suggest to the writer of them the following quotation from "Love's Labour's Lost."I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, S.B.
"You find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent; let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified; but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret . . . Imitari is nothing. So doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider."Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV, S. 2.
HORATIO . . .
. . . The whole town rose Eyes out to meet them; in a car of state The Mayor and all the Councillors rode down To give them greeting, while the blue-eyed team Drawn in Cobb's glittering chariot of pure gold Careered it from the station.--But the Mayor -Thou shouldst have seen the blandness of the man, And watched the effulgent and unspeakable smiles With which he beamed upon them.
His beard, by nature tawny, was suffused With just so much of a most reverend grizzle That youth and age should kiss in't. I assure you He was a Southern Palmerston, so old In understanding, yet jocund and jaunty As though his twentieth summer were as yet But in the very June o' the year, and winter Was never to be dreamt of. Those who heard His words stood ravished. It was all as one As though Minerva, hid in Mercury's jaws, Had counselled some divinest utterance Of honeyed wisdom. So profound, so true, So meet for the occasion, and so--short.
The king sat studying rhetoric as he spoke, While the lord Abbot heaved half-envious sighs And hung suspended on his accents.
CLAUD. But will it pay, Horatio?
HOR. Let Shylock see to that, but yet I trust He's no great loser.
CLAUD. Which side went in first?
HOR.We did, And scored a paltry thirty runs in all.
The lissom Lockyer gambolled round the stumps With many a crafty curvet: you had thought An Indian rubber monkey were endued With wicket-keeping instincts; teazing Tinley Issued his treacherous notices to quit, Ruthlessly truthful to his fame, and who Shall speak of Jackson? 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. Thou must be drunk, Horatio.
HOR.So I am.
