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!
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