Why am I full of joy although
It drizzles on the links?
Why am I buying Veuve Cliquot,
And setting up the drinks?
Why stand I like a prince amid
My pals and envy none?
Ye gods of golf! Today I did
A Hole in One.

I drove my ball to heaven high,
It over-topped the hill;
I tried to guess how it would lie,
If on the fairway still.
I climbed the rise, so sure I'd hit
It straight towards the green:
I looked and looked,--no trace of it
Was to be seen.

My partner putted to the pin,

There here are words of radical advice for a young man looking for a job;
Young man, be a snob.
Yes, if you are in search of arguments against starting at the bottom,
Why I've gottem.
Let the personnel managers differ;
It,s obvious that you will get on faster at the top than at the bottom because
there are more people at the bottom than at the top so naturally the competition
at the bottom is stiffer.
If you need any further proof that my theory works
Well, nobody can deny that presidents get paid more than vice-presidents and

Husbands are things that wives have to get used to putting up with.
And with whom they breakfast with and sup with.
They interfere with the discipline of nurseries,
And forget anniversaries,
And when they have been particularly remiss
They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss,
And when you tell them about something awful they have done they just
look unbearably patient and smile a superior smile,
And think, Oh she'll get over it after a while.
And they always drink cocktails faster than they can assimilate them,

"Hullo, young Jones! with your tie so gay
And your pen behind your ear;
Will you mark my cheque in the usual way?
For I'm overdrawn, I fear."
Then you look at me in a manner bland,
As you turn your ledger's leaves,
And you hand it back with a soft white hand,
And the air of a man who grieves. . . .

"Was it you, young Jones, was it you I saw
(And I think I see you yet)
With a live bomb gripped in your grimy paw
And your face to the parapet?
With your lips asnarl and your eyes gone mad
With a fury that thrilled you through. . . .

It was the Bondi golfing man
Drove off from the golf house tee,
And he had taken his little daughter
To bear him company.
"Oh, Father, why do you swing the club
And flourish it such a lot?"
"You watch it fly o'er the fences high!"
And he tried with a brassey shot.

"Oh, Father, why did you hit the fence
Just there where the brambles twine?"
And the father he answered never a word,
But he got on the green in nine.

"Oh, Father, hark from behind those trees,
What dismal yells arrive!"

Dawn off the Foreland -- the young flood making
Jumbled and short and steep --
Black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking --
Awkward water to sweep.
"Mines reported in the fairway,
Warn all traffic and detain.
Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain."

Noon off the Foreland -- the first ebb making
Lumpy and strong in the bight.
Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking
And the jackdaws wild with fright.
"Mines located in the fairway,
Boats now working up the chain,

The Junior God looked from his place
In the conning towers of heaven,
And he saw the world through the span of space
Like a giant golf-ball driven.
And because he was bored, as some gods are,
With high celestial mirth,
He clutched the reins of a shooting star,
And he steered it down to earth.

The Junior God, 'mid leaf and bud,
Passed on with a weary air,
Till lo! he came to a pool of mud,
And some hogs were rolling there.
Then in he plunged with gleeful cries,
And down he lay supine;

[After Longfellow.]


I drove a golf-ball into the air;
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I lent five shillings to some men,
They spent it all, I know not when,
For who is quick enough to know
The time in which a crown may go?

Long, long afterward, in a whin
I found the golf-ball, black as sin;
But the five shillings are missing still!
They haven't turned up, and I doubt if they will.

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.