(With a bow to George Borrow’s Lavengro)

THE bruisers of England, the men of tremendous renown,
The choice of the Fancy who tooled through the dust from the Town
With peers in their chariots all hasting toward glory and fame,
And gigs and blood horses that raced till they came to the game—
Their times and their seasons, their glory, alas, that must pass
With the turf-treading masters, to fade like the flower of the grass!
Cribb, champion of England, the lion-faced, leading the van;
And Belcher the Younger, a most scientifical man;
The savage, dark Shelton whose blow was a thunderbolt dealt,
The tiny and terrible Randall, the man-eating Celt —
The luck of the ring and the roaring of mass and of class
To the rush and the rally and shifting of feet on the grass!
Black Richmond; the Welshman; and Hudson the Bulldog, and Tom —
That tall Tom of Bedford, brown-eyed, of a thunderous calm,
That yeoman of Holborn, fit follower of Broughton and Brain
Whose portraits grinned down, in his pub, on the hubbub profane —
The clamor of backers in bars and the clinking of glass
At a name new to fame, soon to pass like a cloud from the grass!
Straight left and Long Melford; the battlers stripped down to the buff;
The blows of bare morleys, and neither to hollo enough;
The swells with their whiskers, their beavers aslant on the car,
In greatcoat and hessians, to parley and wager and peer —
The cross and the counter, the feint and the grunt and the thud;
The down’s sun and shadow; the challenger first drawing blood!
The days of the Fancy! A turbulent tale and a dream
That feats of fair field and no favor are fain to redeem
In old colored prints; the profession that Borrow extolled
As though he were Homer invoking the heroes of old —
Their life in his language; his memory never to pass
Though faded their glory as fadeth the flower of the grass!