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!