“A CHERUBIM DOTH CEASE TO SING”

Evening Star, Issue 22382, 4 July 1936, Page 2

“A CHERUBIM DOTH CEASE TO SING”

[Written by Panache, for the 4 Evening Star.’] On Sunday, when it was mild and warm, the Jure day following the poets rather than the hemisphere, the birds had a lovely time. The bellbirds, blackshirtsd, had announced from C o’clock that they would allow no others in the lucerne tree they had invaded; and so tho refugees, wax-eyes and sparrows, hopped on to the verandah and pecked at a large bourgeois meal of bread and meat. On Monday Juno had remembered where she was. Petals fell with the rain from the lucerne tree, and no birds sang. On a newly-pruned apple branch a ruffled thrash looked- at mo complainingly, cocking his head sulkily with an ofa-to-be-in-England air.

The eaten so many of our berries that lie had lost all his figure, and his speckles had expanded into blotches. He looked pampered, and so I advised him to slim, but he drooped so disconsolately that I waved him to the side path, where the worms were so thick that they might have been mistaken for spaghetti. He disappeared into the tree the gardener calls “ Brutus Leviticus,” and I grudged him the last berries, because the scarlet looks so spectacular in the beak of a shining blackbird. I called after him that he should be glad ho was not in England, and I told him what I had read in the newspaper at breakfast. Over the week-end the world rests, except for Nationalists and speed fiends and athletes, so that with Monday’s toast and marmalade there is little to read except that situations . are more tense and that another motor car lias somersaulted down a bank, and this team has been soundly trounced, and that batsman has exceeded if possible his former brilliance. This Monday 1 skipped over Europe and fatalities and read championship golf. It is said that reports of football and cricket matches are tame in comparison with the actual contests. Surely such a charge can never be levelled against golf. Listen. “ Ferrier struck all sorts of trouble on tho outward journey, being once out of bounds and in bunkers, and once struck a lady spectator.” And again. “ When his ball, dug out of a bunker at the eighteenth, shot into the green and ran up to the pin, the caddie pulled out the flag in the nick of time, and the ball dropped in. Feerier threw up his club and stood witm his hands clasped behind his head, rooted to the spot with astonishment.”

i I enjoy this—the epic touch in .the ! whole description; the glancing allusion to out of bounds that catches the quick sympathy of every rebel; the reference to bunkers that makes, proud loins ' quiver as the thoughts rush to grimy stokers gleaming in the furnace, . light; the calm He-man-hood of the player who strikes a lady spectator and marches proudly.on, breast forward; and the final naive gesture of throwing up the club, which proves conclusively that golf is not I hookey. At this revelation a tear stood in my bright blue eye. Perhaps, after all, I was not an outsider. Perhaps my heart would yet beat against the great generous sporting heart of the world.

This Ferrier would be my golfer. My life had been bare alike of sporting and of picture idols. Never had an All Black been pinned to my bedroom wall; until last week I had thought that Ginger Rogers was a man. But now here was an idol, the right blend of dreamer and man of action. Uninhibited by the etiquette of games, he had done what many a footballer longs to do but is too cowardly to attempt. He had struck a lady spectator. Natural and free from cant, he did not fear spontaneity, but dared to express pleasure by throwing up his club. Nor was ho without imagination. He know wonder. Had he not stood, rooted to the spot with astonishment? I caught bis name again and read eagerly. “ Ferrier had a number of visits to the rough.” My heart swelled. Good old Ferrier! No primrose path for him. w At the twelfth in the third round his drive bit and killed a lark. The marker picked up the little bird, and intends to preserve it and offer it to the Royal Liverpool Golf Club.” Golf has become a blood sport.

A skylark wounded in the wing, A cherubin doth cease to sing.We were brought up on the babes in the wood, where birds covered lost children with leaves. In the days of Elizabeth, not fairy-tale days, it was written that the robin red-breast and the wren covered with flowers and leaves the friendless bodies of unburied men. How much kinder birds are to people than people are to birds! The little sister of St. Francis, “ those quivering wings composed, that music still,” will be mounted and displayed on the club-house mantelpiece, its blithe spirit in a blessed dwelling place of lockers.. This is unfair to the lark, which was never a sporting bird. If it had been the lady spectator that was mortally struck, there would have been no objection to having her preserved and offered to the golf club. She was a voluntary spectator, and was more or less asking for it. Hens, run down by motorists, could affpropriately he presented to automobile associations after the taxidermist had smoothed their feathers, since they are sprung from sporting stock. Nor would good taste he offended at the sight of a cow, reconstructed after a railway accident, holding the mirror up to Nature in the office of a traffic manager, for cows are related to the sporting animals that know the bull ring. Perhaps Liverpool will refuse the trophy. There is a bird in the legend connected with its founding: it is a royal club, and the sons of kings have accepted kindnesses from beasts. Golfers may prefer to celebrate the man who lost a match rather than play a ball out of a bird’s