Just recently we received a request for a copy of the wonderful poem written by James Thurber called “When Chic Harley Got Away.” Thurber, a native of Columbus, Ohio, was a classmate of Chic’s when they both attended Ohio State University.
For your enjoyment, we thought we would provide you with that inspiring poem written more than 90 years ago by one of America’s most famous literary giants.
Taking nothing away from Archie, Woody and the other OSU greats, but there never was a poem of this calibre and emotional connection written about any of them. Chic Harley was in a class by himself. When will Ohio State, Columbus and Ohio recognize that?
WHEN CHIC HARLEY GOT AWAY
The years of football playing reach back a long, long way,
And the heroes are a hundred who have worn the red and gray;
You can name the brilliant players from the year the game began,
You can say that someone’s plunging was the best you ever saw -
You can claim the boys now playing stage a game without a flaw -
But admit there was no splendor in all the bright array
Like the glory of the going when Chic Harley got away.
You can tell the tale of Gibson who ran for eighty yards,
Bowling Michiganders over like a row of paper cards;
You can sing the song of Barrington, whose deadly tow oft sent
The hurtling ball to victory when his men were all but spent.
There’s a thousand other stories of the games of other years,
But one from the thousand like a flash of light appears,
And there’s nothing half so thrilling from the first year to today,
Like the glory of the going when Chic Harley got away.
Declaim accounts of smashing lines and plunging backs and then
Shout a little louder and declaim them once again,
“There never was another time like in the good old days
When they used to play a man’s game with the mass formation plays.”
You can laud the Powells and Dunlaps as the mountains in the line
That made the game of football something superman and fine,
But still there’s nothing in it all, when you have had your say,
Liek the glory of the going when Chic Harley got away.
Old grads can mention how they fought when Kenyon came to town,
And how they used to up and knock the bleeding foemen down,
And we’ll admit the good old days were red and raw and rough,
And the men that wore the moleskin surely had the oldtime stuff.
Or you can land the recent days and name a field of stars
As scintillant as Jupiter and as militant as Mars -
But they’ll never be another thing can light up all the day
Like the glory of the going when Chic Harley got away.