BALLADE OF LAWN TENNIS
[WE have long held Mr Swinburne and Mr W. S. Gilbert to be
the greatest poets of all time. This attempt to combine their metres
and styles ought consequently to produce the finest poem of all time.
We affirm unhesitatingly that it has !]
In the godlike golden glory of the vast irremeable
insuperable weather
(Where those perfectly beastly bad Rembrandt
effects are, over by the sunset that looks so very
much as if to-morrow would be wet)
They have bridled the sun with a beautiful bit of black
and purple clouds, to tie the Poor up in an intolerable
tether,
(It’s enough to make a ’eathen slave, ’ow much
more a gennelman as ’as allus been a gennelman
and a free-born son of Brittania’s ’earts of oak and
no negro fret.)
Notwithstanding boys beautiful with youth bounce in
the efflorescent sunlight two each sweet side of a
maiden’s forelock worked into the semblance of a net.
Mr Swinburne is a person who can’t say a thing
straight out, you know. What we're driving at
(a little obscurely, you’ll say) but certainly driving,
driving furiously like Ahab or one of those
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