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This poem dates from 1806 when Byron was 19. Two years before he had played cricket for Harrow against Eton at Lords, scoring 7 and 2. It contains elements of nostalgia for what it asserts to be an time of lost innocence. The following extracts relate to cricket and provide an insight into the role of the game in the lives of the youth of the well-to-do, together with an example of the game figuring in the work of England’s finest poets.
High, through those elms with hoary branches crown’d Fair IDA’S bower adorns the landscape round; There Science, from her favour’d seat, surveys The vale where rural Nature claims her praise; To her awhile resigns her youthful train, Who move in joy, and dance along the plain; In scatter’d groups, each favour’d haunt pursue, Repeat old pastimes, and discover new; Flush’d with his rays, beneath the noontide Sun, In rival bands, between the wickets run, Drive o’er the sward the ball with active force, Or chase with nimble feet its rapid course. ........... Alonzo! best and dearest of my friends, Thy name ennobles him, who thus commends: From this fond tribute thou canst gain no praise; The praise is his, who now that tribute pays. Oh! in the promise of thy early youth, If Hope anticipate the words of Truth! Some loftier bard shall sing thy glorious name, To build his own, upon thy deathless fame: Friend of my heart, and foremost of the list Of those with whom I lived supremely blest; Oft have we drain’d the font of ancient lore, Though drinking deeply, thirsting still the more; Yet, when Confinement’s lingering hour was done, Our sports, our studies, and our souls were one: Together we impell’d the flying ball, Together waited in our tutor’s hall; Together join’d in cricket’s manly toil, Or shar’d the produce of the river’s spoil; Or plunging from the green declining shore, Our pliant limbs the buoyant billows bore: In every element, unchang’d, the same, All, all that brothers should be, but the name.