The Spectator [ no novel for this unit ]
Anonymous
The High Jump
He slowly paced his distance off, and turned,
Took poise, and darted forward at full speed;
Before the bar the heavy earth he spurned,
Himself an arrow. They who saw his deed
Tensed muscles, poised and ran and leaped, and burned
With close drawn breath, helping him to succeed:
Now he is over, they are over, too;
Foeman and friend were flying when he flew.
Don Johnson
Grabbling
Longer than any of us in air
Or common light could not breathe
He would stay down, fishing
By braille in pools darker
Than skins of old bibles.
On the green bank, closing
My eyes, I would dizzy myself
Holding my breath, trying
To picture him blind and unhearing
While he probed under root knob
And rock. I would come back always
To the sheen of slow
Current, and empty boat, birds
I made call, ‘rise up, rise up,’
Till he boiled up sputtering
Like a sinner the preacher
Upstream had lost (it was always
Sunday). He would toss each
Fish at his bucket, fling the
Occasional snake at the bank
Without speaking,
Then rest, wide-eyed at the gunwhale.
I could not know what he did
When he ducked under, but squinted
Trying to learn each surface gesture,
Back-lighted move. And once
I called out to him, “How?” His answer,
“Get wet boy”. He didn’t say
That each time down grows longer,
Fish or no fish; that rivers
Everywhere are one, never the same;
That when you finally let go
To float up clutching whatever
You can bring back, worldly light
Explodes, barbed, uplifting,
Almost holy.
St John Emile Clavering Hankin
De Gestibus
I am an adventurous man,
And always go upon the plan
Of shunning danger whenever I can.
And so I fail to understand
Why every year a stalwart band
Of tourists go to Switzerland,
And spend their time for several weeks
With quaking hearts and pallid cheeks,
Scaling abrupt and windy peaks.
In fact, I’m old enough to find
Climbing of almost any kind
Is very little to my mind.
A mountain summit white with snow
Is an attractive sight, I know,
But why not see it from below?
Why leave the hospital plain
And scale Mount Blanc with toil and pain
Merely to scramble down again?
Some men pretend they think it bliss
To clamber up a precipice
Or dangle over an abyss,
To crawl along a mountainside,
Supported by a rope that’s tied
- Not too securely - to a guide:
But such pretenses, it is clear,
In the aspiring mountaineer
Are usually insincere.
And many a climber, I’ll be bound,
Whom scarped and icy crags surround,
Wishes himself on level ground.
So, I for one, do not propose
To cool my comfortable toes
In regions of perpetual snows.
As long as I can take my ease,
Fanned by a soothing breeze
Under the shade of English trees.
And anyone who leaves my share
Of English fields and English air
May take the Alps for aught I care!
Phyllis McGinley
Reflections Outside a Gymnasium
The belles of the eighties were soft,
They were ribboned and ruffled and gored,
With bustles built proudly aloft
And bosoms worn dashingly for’d.
So, doting on bosoms and bustles,
By fashion and circumstance pent,
They languished, neglecting their muscles,
Growing flabby and plump and conent,
Their most strenuous sport
A game of croquet
On a neat little court
In the cool of the day,
Or, dipping with ladylike motions,
Fully clothed, into decorous oceans.
The eighties surveyed with alarm
A figure long-legged and thinnish;
And they had not discovered the charm
Of a solid-mahogany finish.
Of suns that could darken or speckle
Their delicate skins they were weary.
They found it distasteful to freckle
Or brown like a nut or berry.
So they sat in the shade
Or they put on a hat
And frequently stayed
Fairly healthy at that
(And never lay nightlong awake
For sunburn and loveliness’ sake).
When ladies rode forth, it was news,
Though sideways ensconced in the saddle.
And when they embarked in canoes
A gentleman wielded the paddle.
They never felt urged to compete
With persons excessively agile.
Their slippers were small on their feet
And they thought it no shame to be fragile.
Could they swim? They could not.
Did they dive? They forbode it.
And nobody thought
The less of them for it.
No, none pointed out how their course was absurd,
Thought their tennis was feeble, their golf but a word.
When breezes were chilly, they wrapped up in flannels,
They couldn’t turn cartwheels, they didn’t swim channels,
They seldom climbed mountains, and, what was more shocking,
Historians doubt they ever went walking.
If unenergetic,
A demoiselle dared to
Be no more athletic
Than ever she cared to.
Oh, strenuous comrades and maties,
How pleasant was life in the eighties!
Paul Goodman
Don Larsen’s Perfect Game
Everybody went to bat three times
except their pitcher (twice) and his pinch hitter,
but nobody got anything at all.
Don Larsen in the eighth and ninth looked pale
and afterwards he did not want to talk.
This is a fellow who will have bad dreams.
His catcher, Berra jumped for joy and hugged him
like a bear, legs and arms, and all the Yankees
crowded around him thick to make him be
not lonely, and in fact in fact in fact
nothing went wrong. But that was yesterday.