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!
