Golf Poetry: A Psalm of Golf

Golf poetry from the February, 1898 issue of Golf magazine.

A Psalm of Golf

Tell me not in scornful accents
Golf is but an empty game,
That the man who plays it lacks sense,
And as a sport it’s rather tame.

Golf is real, golf is earnest,
And a low score is its goal
Just high art, to make, though learnest
Skillful shots from hole to hole

Pulls and slices soon will teach one
Not to hit balls carelessly,
But to play our strokes that each one
Finds us further from the tee.

Golf is long and time is fleeting
Keep on playing, rain or snow
Hardly taking time for eating,
Try to bring your score down low.

In the links’ broad fields, there may
Disagreeable hazards lurk;
Be not disconcerted any
Let your mashie do the work.

Let no caddie, howe’er scornful
With his grinning anger yon’
Remember, in your struggles mournful,
He was once a duffer, too!

Drives of short length all remind us
That in bunkers we may land
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints in the shifting sand.

Footprints that perhaps another,
Struggling with his clubs in vain,
Some forlorn and Foozling brother,
Seeing, many take heart again.

Let us, then, avoid all pressing;
Follow strokes through more and more
Skilled approaching, slow addressing,
Learn to beat the Bogey Score!

– H.H.P

I do not know the identity of H.H.P. A scan through the magazine did not turn up anyone with those initials. I suspect that the person was known to the readers, though.