Parker's Piece - Pete & Blog in the Garden

Parker’s Piece

Published by Peter at May 23, 2021

Tags

May 19, 1891

By James Kenneth Stephen (1859–1892)

English poet, and tutor to Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.

TO see good Tennis! what diviner joy

Can fill our leisure, or our minds employ?

Not Sylvia’s self is more supremely fair,

Than balls that hurtle through the conscious air.

Not Stella’s form instinct with truer grace

Than Lambert’s racket poised to win the chase.

Not Chloe’s harp more native to the ear,

Than the tense strings which smite the flying sphere.

When Lambert boasts the superhuman force,

Or splits the echoing grille without remorse:

When Harradine, as graceful as of yore,

Wins better than a yard, upon the floor;

When Alfred’s ringing cheer proclaims success,

Or Saunders volleys in resistlessness;

When Heathcote’s service makes the dedans ring

With just applause, and own its honoured king;

When Pettitt’s prowess all our zeal awoke

’Till high Olympus shuddered at the stroke;

Or, when, receiving thirty and the floor,

The novice serves a dozen faults or more;

Or some plump don, perspiring and profane,

Assails the roof and breaks the exalted pane;

When vantage, five games all, the door is called,

And Europe pauses, breathless and appalled,

Till lo! the ball by cunning hand caressed

Finds in the winning gallery a nest;

These are the moments, this the bliss supreme,

Which makes the artist’s joy, the poet’s dream.

Let cricketers await the tardy sun,

Break one another’s shins and call it fun;

Let Scotia’s golfers through the affrighted land

With crooked knee and glaring eye-ball stand;

Let football rowdies show their straining thews,

And tell their triumphs to a mud-stained Muse;

Let india-rubber pellets dance on grass

Where female arts the ruder sex surpass;

Let other people play at other things;

The king of games is still the game of kings.

*******************

By Nigel Gallimore:

While at King’s, Cambridge, Old Etonian James Kenneth Stephen (1859–1892), learnt to play tennis, and became exceedingly fond of the game. The verses called “Parker’s Piece, May 19, 1891” truthfully represent his sentiments on the subject. – “Let other people play at other things; The king of games is still the game of kings.” – Stephen suffered a serious head injury in an accident in the winter of 1886 or 1887, which may have exacerbated the bipolar disorder from which he suffered, a condition also found in his cousin, Virginia Woolf. In 1891, Stephen was committed to St Andrew’s Hospital, a mental asylum in Northampton. In January 1892 the former royal tutor heard that his erstwhile pupil, the 28-year-old Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, a man destined to be king one day, had died of pneumonia at Sandringham, after contracting influenza. On hearing the news, Stephen refused to eat, and he died twenty days later, aged 32. The cause of death, according to the death certificate, was mania.

Nigel Gallimore publishes fascinating polo history on his Facebook page. If you have an interest in polo, I highly recommend you send him a Facebook friend request.

Recent Links:
La Aguada Rounds Out 2021 Polo Rider Cup Teams
Lamaze Decides Against Tokyo Olympics
Heat and Humidity at the Tokyo Olympics
Vaccinated
Amr Zedan’s Medina Spirit
Etiquette for Riders
Hong Kong joins 2021 Polo Rider Cup
Supporting Yayasan Chow Kit
African Horse Sickness Update
FEI Guidelines for Extreme Heat
FEI Videos on Heat & Humidity
Vale: HRH Prince Philip
Vale: Marcos Uranga
A Decade of Development
Equi-Gold Turmeric for Horses
RSPC Magazine Edition 3
ClickPolo Asia Feature
The Secretariat
Mobility: Riding For Polo
The Intern’s Debut
Cancellations Galore
The New Season is Here
Chris Ladbrook is Back at RSPC
ZT Botanicals

Please follow and like us: