O thou, that dear and happy Isle,
The garden of the world erstwhile.…
Unhappy! shall we nevermore
That sweet militia restore?
O thou, that dear and happy Isle,
The garden of the world erstwhile.…
Unhappy! shall we nevermore
That sweet militia restore?
Snatches of an old parody floated in his brain with the vision—a parody of Walt Whitman—
Far off a grey-brown thrush warbling in hedge or in marsh; Down there in the blossoming bushes, my brother, what is that you are saying?…
The perfect feel of a "fourer "!…
The jubilant cry from the flowering thorn to the flowerless willow, "smite, smite, smite."
(Flowerless willow no more but every run a late-shed perfect bloom.)
The fierce chant of my demon brother issuing forth against the demon bowler, "hit him, hit him, hit him."
The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks, the responsive echoes of my comrades and the hundred thence-resulting runs, passionately yearned for, never, never again to be forgotten.
Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, blending all, fusing all, bathing all in floods of soft ecstatic perspiration.