The cricketers of Hambledon – a poem by Bruce Bunt, set to music in December 1928 by Peter Warlock. Originally scored for unison voices, cornet, saxhorns, baritones and euphonium, for performance by the Hambledon Brass Band and choir at a cricket match on New Year's Day 1929; later expanded a bit by Warlock and published as a song for voice(s) and piano: I'll make a song of Hambledon, and sing it at "The George", Of balls that flew from Beldham's bat like sparks from Fennex' forge; The centuries of Aylward, and a thousand guineas bet, And Sueter keeping wicket to the thunderbolts of Brett. Then up with every glass and we'll sing a toast in chorus: "The cricketers of Hambledon who played the game before us, The stalwarts of the olden time who rolled a lonely down, And made the king of games for men, with Hambledon the crown." Although they sang the nights away, their afternoons were spent In beating men of Hertfordshire and flogging men of Kent, And when the flow'r of England fell to Taylor and his peers, The fame of Hambledonians went ringing down the years. The sun has left Broadhalfpenny, and the moon rides overhead; So pass the bottle round again for drinking to the dead To Small and his companions all who gathered, lose or win, To take their fill of Nyren's best when Nyren kept the inn.
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