Part 5 (1/2)
Who has a waggle like Rhona Adair?
Of all the girls I've seen Playing across the green You, Rhona, are the Queen!
Rhona Adair!
The Duffer's Elegy
”Oh! put me on your waiting list I'll be a golfer if I may And learn the joys too long I've missed Before I get too old to play!”
They gave him on the list a place And year by year they let him wait, For golfers are a long-lived race And very seldom emigrate.
When, after many weary years, He reached the top his sponsor said, ”The friend (excuse these natural tears) Whom I proposed has long been dead.”
And when at last in Charon's wherry, It was the sponsor's turn to stand His friend came down to meet the ferry A phantom niblick in his hand.
”Welcome to Hades,” thus the shade In hollow-sounding accents spoke Then spied a puff-ball and essayed To loft it, but he m.u.f.fed his stroke.
”Permit me, pray, to be your guide Until you've learnt your way about Our golf course is our greatest pride Old Colonel Bogey laid it out.
”Some people say Avernus stinks And Acheron smells like a sewer But Fernhill golfers like our links They find the air so fresh and pure.
”Cocytus, Styx and Phlegethon As hazards serve extremely well, In this particular alone, The Lambton links are just like h.e.l.l.
”The asphodel wants cutting sadly, The lies are wretched, more's the pity But everything is managed badly By that infernal Green Committee.
”Come, lay aside your shroud and pall And play a friendly round with me.”
(A Dead Sea apple was the ball, A pinch of church-yard dust, the tee.)
He took the club of cypress wood And smote what seemed a mighty blow, But, though the aim was true and good The ball remained in _statu quo_.
”Alack and well-a-day,” he cried, ”A duffer must I ever be, A duffer I have lived and died A duffer through Eternity.”
1905.
When Potter Played
When Potter played in front of me The other day upon the links, The mist rolled landward from the sea (The sleepy Caddie yawns and blinks), We watched him waggle at the tee And curl his body into kinks, When Potter played in front of me The other day upon the links.
We watched him make the divots flee And dribble o'er the bunker's brinks, The dewdrops sparkled on the lea, The sun shone through the fog bank's c.h.i.n.ks.
My partner, hopeful, said to me ”He'll lose, and let us through methinks!”
When Potter played in front of me The other day upon the links.
The noonday sun looks down in glee While Potter in the bunker swinks, He plies the niblick merrily While Caddie unto Caddie winks.
The crow on yonder tall fir tree Looks down and caws at such high jinks, When Potter played in front of me The other day upon the links.
The shadows fall on land and sea, The sun to rest in splendour sinks, And Potter crouched on hand and knee Thinks out each putt, and thinks and thinks.
We all got home too late for tea!
My mind with grief and horror shrinks From memory of the day when we Played after Potter on the links.
1910.