To A Golf Ball – Golf Poetry

To A Golf Ball – Golf Poetry

TO A GOLF BALL 

{On finding one in the grass.) 

WEE, modest, weather-stained sphere, 
How comes it that I find you here, 
Where ye have lain for many a year, 
In spot secluded? 
How have ye, with the green so near, 
All search eluded? 

Who was the wight who drove ye thus? 
Were ye resigned without a fuss, 
Or did he incontinently cuss. 
Because ye vanished? 
Belike a match was on, and thus 
All hope was banished. 

I gaze with awe upon thy gashes, 
So eloquent of cleeks and mashies ; 
And here's a cut betrays the thrashes 
Of keen-edged brassey; 
Or made by niblick's lightning flashes 
In hands of lassie. 

Far be it from me to despise. 
Ye have a value in my eyes 
That's not proportioned to thy size, 
However small. 
In fact, I'll hold ye as a prize, 
Ye battered baU ! 

With others of your kin and kith, 
I'll hand ye o'er to Willie Smith. 
Now what I tell ye is no myth — 
He'll make ye new ! 
I don't know what he does it with, 
But yet it's true. 

E. C. Potter

from Lyrics of the Links, 1921