THE LAST BALL OF SUMMER
'Tis the last ball of Summer
Left rolling alone;
All his artful companions
Are smitten and gone;
No trace of his kindred,
No shooter is seen
To relate all the glories
Of Briggs and Nepean.
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To curl on the stumps;
Since thy brothers were slogged so,
Partake of their thumps!
Thus kindly I smack thee
Afar in the heavens,
Where the mates of thy tribe went
For sixes and sevens!
And soon may there follow,
Ere sinews decay,
A capital season
To get thee away!
For muscles must wither,
Our cricket be flown;
And we shall inhabit
Pavilions, and groan!
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In Verse.
Country Muse. In two volumes. (David Nutt.)
Orchard Songs. (Elkin Mathews and John Lane.)
In Prose.
A June Romance. (George E. Over, Rugby. The cheaper edition nearly ready.)
SOME CRITICAL OPINIONS.
'Dowsabella lives again and cowslips are in bloom.'—'A Fogey' in The Contemporary Review.
'There is a true country freshness in his lyrics,—birds sing and the breeze blows in them; his Clarindas and other country maidens have the rosy bloom of health and outdoor life, and his verse is musical and finished, and free from rustic affectations.'—Edinburgh Review.
'The verse of Mr. Gale, perhaps more truly and constantly than the verse of any of our younger living poets, stands the Miltonic test of poetry, in proving itself "simple, sensuous, passionate."'—From The Poets and Poetry of the Century.