CROQUET.

O feeblest game, how strange if you should rise

To favour, vice tennis superseded!

And yet beneath such glowing summer skies,

When wildest energy is invalided,

Mere hitting balls through little hoops

Seems work enough. One merely stoops,

And lounges round, no other toil is needed.

Upon a breezy lawn beneath the shade

Of rustling trees that hide the sky so sunny,