Page 40 - Poetry-Whimsy

And for weeks, while the dew on the racing-track lay,
He ran before breakfast a half mile a day,
Improving his style and increasing his “stay”;
And was first at the finish, and fainted away,
At the games of the Hercules Club.

Six nights in succession he sat up to pore
“The Laws of Athletics” devotedly o’er
(Which number ten thousand and seventy-four),
With a view to proposing a very few more
In a speech to the Hercules Club.

And his coat upon festal occasions was gay
With medals on medals, marked “H. A. A. A.,” *
With a motto in Greek (which, my lore to display,
Means “Pleasure is business”), a splendid array
Of the spoils of the Hercules Club.

But acquaintances not of the muscular kind
Began to observe that his brow was deep-lined,
Too brilliant his eye, and to wander inclined;
He appeared, in a word (early English), “forepined”;
And one morning his ledger and desk he resigned,
Explaining, “I can’t have my health undermined
By this ‘demnition grind’; and I’m getting behind
In my duties as Captain” (an office defined,
Page hundred and two, in the by-laws that bind
With red tape the great Hercules Club).

And he further remarked, in most serious way :
“Give it up, did you say? ‘Twill be frigid, that day!**
Why, without relaxation, sir, life wouldn’t pay!
And I, for my part, will remain till I’m gray
On the roll of the Hercules Club! “

You perceive, gentle reader, the rub.
Is it nobler to suffer those arrows and slings
Lack of exercise brings—or take clubs, and let things
Unconnected with matters athletic take wings;
Till all interests beside, like the Arabs, shall glide
From the landscape of life, once a plain free and wide,
But now fenced for the “Games” which we lightly began,

~ 38 ~