(_With thanks to Kipling_)
When the flush of the new-born sun fell first on
Eden's gold and green,
Our Father Adam sat under the Tree and shaved
his driver clean,
And joyously whirled it round his head and
knocked the apples off,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves:
"Well done--but is it golf?"
Wherefore he called his wife and fled to practise
again his swing--
The first of the world who foozled his stroke (yet
the grandpapa of Tyng);
And he left his clubs to the use of his sons--and
that was a glorious gain,
When the Devil chuckled "Beastly Golf" in the
ear of the horrored Cain.
They putted and drove in the North and South;
they talked and laid links in the West;
Till the waters rose o'er Ararat's tees, and the
aching wrists could rest--
Could rest till that blank, blank canvasback,
heard the Devil jeer and scoff,
As he flew with the flood-fed olive branch, "Dry
weather. Let's play golf."
They pulled and sliced and pounded the earth,
and the balls went sailing off
Into bunkers and trees while the Devil grinned,
"Keep your eye on it! _That's_ not golf."
Then the Devil took his sulphured cleik and
mightily he swung,
While each man marveled and cursed his form
and each in an alien tongue.
The tale is as old as the Eden Tree--and new as
the newest green,
For each man knows ere his lip thatch grows the
caddy's mocking mien.
And each man hears, though the ball falls fair,
the Devil's cursed cough
Of joy as the man holes out in ten, "You did
it--but what poor golf!"
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to
the shape of a niblick's shaft,
We have learned to make a mashie with a
wondrous handicraft,
We know that a hazard is often played best by
re-driving off,
But the Devil whoops as he whooped of old, "It's
easy, but is it golf?"
When the flicker of summer falls faint on the
Clubroom's gold and green,
The sons of Adam sit them down and boast of
strokes unseen;
They talk of stymies and brassie lies to the tune
of the steward's cough,
But the Devil whispers in their ears, "Gadzooks!
But that's not golf!"
Now if we could win to the Eden Tree where
the Nine-Mile Links are laid,
And seat ourselves where Man first swore as he
drove from the grateful shade,
And if we could play where our Fathers played
and follow our swings well through,
By the favor of God we might know of Golf
what our Father Adam knew.