The most famous lines of poetry in cricket literature were written by Francis Thompson.
"As the run-stealers flicker to and fro, / To and fro / O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!"
Thompson gave up the study of medicine to write poetry of a spiritual nature, occasionally indulging in light verse about cricket, and a parody of Edward Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam. He was 47 when he died in 1907. Poets of the game owe him, much as the prose writers owe Neville Cardus.
The game of cricket lends itself to evocative poetry, as do the moral values imposed on it by writers. But the finest and most touching poems are about the players. John Arlott's tribute to Jack Hobbs on his seventieth birthday, reads in part:
"There was a wisdom so informed your bat
To understanding of the bowler's trade
That each resource of strength or skill he used
Seemed but the context of the stroke you played.
The Master: records prove the title good;
Yet figures fail you, for they cannot say
How many men whose names you never knew
Are proud to tell their sons they saw you play ... "
It is difficult to top that, although the following picture painted by Alan Ross in "Test Match at Lord's" is hard to beat since it describes so many elements in so concise a manner: