Spread the Field

I can't resist a bit of high Victoriana... 

Vitaï Lampada*

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night —
Ten to make and the match to win —
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red, —
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks,
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

This is the word that year by year
While in her place the School is set
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind —
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

Sir Henry Newbolt

Almost 40 years ago we bought a watercolour with "A bumping pitch and a blinding light" written on the back. It's still up on the landing and I still like it - a classic, green, English landscape with a cloudy sky and a single sunbeam illuminating a distant cricket match, along with the pink skirts of a mother and child in a gaggle of spectators. Nostalgic and sentimental? Guilty as charged. At that time, I'd never heard of the poem though 

Henry Newbold was enormously popular in Victorian England, writing patriotic, often military-related poetry, reflecting the unchallenged rulers of the global empire back to themselves. Here he perpetuates the mythical line, ascribed to Wellington, that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing field of Eton. The poem was written 15 or 20 years before WWI. The battle that is referenced was at Abu Klea, during a failed British expedition to relieve General Gordon in the siege of Khartoum. Soon afterwards the defeated British army left Sudan

The values and worldview that the poem represents were of course obliterated in the horror of Passchendaele, after which it was often satirised. Newbold himself came to hate the poem and described it as his "Frankenstein monster". I find it still has some power as a poignant echo of that world, based though it was on the illusions and delusions of imperial power, that was disemboweled so abruptly in Flanders field

If ten runs was all they needed, they got the bulk of them in the over I watched to take this, against bowling that was not likely to raise many bumpers

*means  "The torch of life" - taken from a 1st century poem by the Roman post Lucretius