THE CITY OF GOLF

Would you like to see a city given over,

Soul and body, to a tyrannising game?

If you would, there's little need to be a rover,

For St. Andrews is the abject city's name.

It is surely quite superfluous to mention,

To a person who has been here half an hour,

That Golf is what engrosses the attention

Of the people, with an all-absorbing power.

Rich and poor alike are smitten with the fever;

Their business and religion is to play;

And a man is scarcely deemed a true believer,

Unless he goes at least a round a day.

The city boasts an old and learned college,

Where you'd think the leading industry was Greek;

Even there the favoured instruments of knowledge

Are a driver and a putter and a cleek.

All the natives and the residents are patrons

Of this royal, ancient, irritating sport;

All the old men, all the young men, maids and matrons —

The universal populace, in short.

In the morning, when the feeble light grows stronger,

You may see the players going out in shoals;

And when night forbids their playing any longer,

They tell you how they did the different holes

Golf, golf, golf — is all the story!

In despair my overburdened spirit sinks,

Till I wish that every golfer was in glory,

And I pray the sea may overflow the links.

One slender, struggling ray of consolation

Sustains me, very feeble though it be:

There are two who still escape infatuation,

My friend M'Foozle' s one, the other's me.

As I write the words, M'Foozle enters blushing,

With a brassy and an iron in his hand...

This blow, so unexpected and so crushing,

Is more than I am able to withstand.

So now it but remains for me to die, sir.

Stay! There is another course I may pursue —

And perhaps upon the whole it would be wiser —

I will yield to fate and be a golfer too!