balls

And there he plays extravagant matches In fitless finger-stalls On a cloth untrue With a twisted cue And elliptical billiard balls.

—Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)

   Purpose apart, perched like an umpire, dozes, Dreams golden balls whirring through indigo. Clay blurs the whitewash but day still encloses The albinos, bonded in their flick and flow. Playing in musicked gravity, the pair Score liquid Euclids in foolscaps of air.

—Avison, Margaret

The fellows were practising long shies and bowling lobs and slow twisters. In the soft grey silence he could hear the bump of the balls: and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl.

—Joyce,James Augustine Aloysius

Forasmuch as there isgreat noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise, which God forbid, we command and forbid on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in future.

—Edward II

How on earth are the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England†to be taken seriouslyagainst that kind of background noise? It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease, only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.

—Howe, Baron

Billiards is very similar to snooker, except there are only three balls and no one watches it.

—Davis, Steve

And the wind shall say: 'Here were decent godless people: Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls.'

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)