In Search Of Lost Grounds
¶ 1
Leave a comment on verse 1 1
Mr Wordsworth walks to Bolton
He wandered lonely as a cloud
At evening in the encroaching dark
When all at once he saw a crowd
A floodlit game at Burnden Park!
“Dine at the Packhorse” along the roof
The driver leaning from his train
The thronged embankment – all was proof
That the Wanderers had come home again.
¶ 2
Leave a comment on verse 2 0
Mr Eliot stops in Manchester
Unreal City under a foggy dawn
Maine Road in the Sixties, and a packed crowd
Visions of Bell, and Francis Lee
Of Summerbee and Harry Dowd
Now they’ve moved to M11-3
With gold from eastern lands
So many who then were not even born
Are the City’s lifelong fans
¶ 3
Leave a comment on verse 3 0
Mr Coleridge goes to the Arsenal
In Highbury did Chapman’s team
Command the League and Cup
Won trophies in an endless stream
Their star went up and up
And in Highbury did busy hands
An Arsenal pleasure-drome invent
With clocks, and fine art-deco stands
But the Gunners upped – and went
¶ 4
Leave a comment on verse 4 0
Mr Shelley visits Wembley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said “Two dome-capped towers once stood here
On Wembley Way. Come nigh and stare.”
And on a pedestal these words appear,
“My name is Ossie Ardiles …
Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!”
¶ 5
Leave a comment on verse 5 0
… and Jude the Obscure is back in Oxford
Up past the Britannia on Headington Hill
There are trees where the Manor Ground stood
United have moved out to Blackbird Leys
And the crows have returned to the wood.
A great idea and well executed. Thanks Graham.
Thanks!