Explore "Cricket in the Garden" by Norman Gale on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Before the aproned nurse arrives, / To tell of soap and tub and sponges, / My nephew, fierce and ruddy, drives, / Disgraceful edges, callous lunges. / Twenty auriculas declare / The zeal of his peculiar magic, / Till every aunt is in despair, / And even Job (the cat) looks tragic.
Down goes a tulip's noble head! / (Poor Auntie Nell is nearly crying! ) / And now a stately stock is dead, / And now a columbine is dying. / Vainly the cook with female lobs / Desires to hit the egg-box wicket; / And not among the housemaid's jobs -- / 'Tis very plain -- is garden cricket.