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!