(_A reflection on the recent Amateur Golf Championship at Sandwich
suggested by a study of the illustrated papers._)
They swung with the accurate grace of the clockwork at Greenwich;
Their brassies unswervingly held to the line of the pegs;
Their chip-shots came down on the greens and mistook them for spinach,
And stopped like poached eggs;
Not theirs the desire for the sandpit, not theirs the inadequate legs.
Or if over they failed to lie moribund, dauntless the heroes
Stooped down to impossible putts for a half or a win,
Stooped down in voluminous knickers and all sorts of queer hose
And stuffed the ball in,
Like American packers of pig-meat, hard home to the floor of the tin.
These things I admired; but I wondered still more when the mighty,
The mystical thumpers of pills by the marge of the spray,
Having somehow offended Poseidon or else Aphrodite,
Got chucked from the fray,
Passed forth till they left Mr. JENKINS sole lord of the hazardous
bay.
When the ultimate putt was holed out in each notable duel
How grandly they took it, remarking "I think (or I guess)
That the right man has conquered," not shouting that Fortune was cruel,
Not murmuring, "Bless!"
What a glory illumined their features when snapped by the popular
Press!
Full glad is the face of the earth when the vineyards are laden;
Loud laughs with innumerous laughter in wreath upon wreath
The ocean at Blackpool or Margate; most blithely the maiden
Unfastens the sheath
Of her mouth like the bloom of a musk rose, when Fangol has furbished
her teeth;
So fair was the smile of the sea-kings; so sweet was the look on
The faces of HEZLET and OUIMET and most of their peers
When they passed from the contest, a smile with a sort of a hook on,
Unclouded with tears;
It went slap through their cheeks down the fair-way and bunkered
itself by their ears.
And if e'er in the future, cast down from the promise of Heaven,
Half-stymied by William, I grumble and groan at my fate
When he captures the hole (and the game) with a pretty bad 7,
Whilst my score is 8,
And I bubble with impotent anger, I seethe with tumultuous hate.
Let me think of my album of photos, whose title is "After,"
All cut from the dailies; it gives you most wonderful tips
For producing without any pressure the right kind of laughter;
It gives you the grips
And the stance of the teeth of the _plus_ men, and how to get length
from the lips.