RPO -- Robert Fuller Murray : Imitated from Wordsworth

Robert Fuller Murray (1863-1894)

Imitated from Wordsworth

1He brought a team from Inversnaid

2 To play our Third Fifteen,

3A man whom none of us had played

4 And very few had seen.

5He weighed not less than eighteen stone,

6 And to a practised eye

7He seemed as little fit to run

8 As he was fit to fly.

9He looked so clumsy and so slow,

10 And made so little fuss;

11But he got in behind -- and oh,

12 The difference to us!

Notes

1] A respectful take-off of William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways," one of his `Lucy' poems.
Inversnaid: a hamlet on the eastern shore of Loch Lomond.

2] our Third Fifteen: the third-best `side' or team at rugby football.

5] eighteen stone: weighing 252 pounds.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Robert F. Murray: his Poems, with a memoir by Andrew Lang (London: Longmans, Green, 1894): xliii. PR 5101 M5A6 1894 Robarts Library
First publication date: 1891
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2001
Recent editing: 1:2002/10/5

Rhyme: abab

Other poems by Robert Fuller Murray