If Gray Had been A Golfer – Golf Poetry

IF GRAY HAD BEEN A GOLFER 

BENEATH these rugged elms, that maple's shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
Each in his last eternal bunker laid, 
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

Oft to the harvest did their sickle yield, 
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; 
Ah, but they had no mashies then to wield. 
They never learned to use the Vardon stroke. 

The poor old souls ! They only lived to toil. 
To sow and reap and die, at last, obscure; 
They never with their niblick tore the soil — 
How sad the golfless annals of the poor ! 

The pomp of power may once have thrilled the souls 
Of unenlightened men — today it sinks 
Beneath the saving grace of eighteen holes ! 
The paths of glory lead but to the links. 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 
Some heart that would have quickened to the game; 
Hands that the lovely baffy might have swayed, 
To Colonel Bogey's everlasting shame. 

Full many a hole was passed by them unseen. 
Because no fluttering flag was hoisted there ; 
Full many a smooth and sacred putting green 
They tore up with the plough, and didn't care. 

Some village Taylor, that with dauntless breast 
Could whang the flail or swing the heavy maul ; 
Some mute inglorious Travis here may rest, 
Some Harriman who never lost a ball. 

Far from the eager foursome's noble strife 
They levelled bunkers and they piled the hay, 
Content to go uncaddied all through life. 
And never were two up and one to play ! 

No further seek their hardships to disclose, 
Nor stand in wonder at their lack of worth ;
Here in these bunkers let their dust repose ; 
They didn't know St. Andrews' was on earth. 

S. E. Riser. 

Photo Credit: Old Course by Darrin Antrobus, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons