I hate the dreadful hollow, in the shade of the little wood,
Its lips in the grass above are bearded with flame-gold whin;
I have tried to forget the past, to play the shot as I should,
But echo there, however I put it, answers me, "In!"
For there in that ghastly pit long years ago I was found,
Playing the sad three-more, interring the sphere where it fell;
Mangled and flattened and hacked and dinted deep in the ground,
My ball had the look that is joy to the loafer with balls to sell.
Down at the foot of the cliff, whose shadow makes dusk of the dawn,
Maddened I stood and muttered, making a friend of despair;
Then out I climbed while the wind that had tricked me began to fawn,
Politely removing the sand that had made a mat of my hair.
Why do they prate of the blessings of golf on an inland course
Where the "pretty" is but the plain, the "rough," prehensile hay,
That yields up the ball (if at all) to a reckless _tour de force_,
And mocks with rippling mirth your search in it day by day.
And the lost-ball madness flushes up in the 12-man's head,
When the breeze brings down the impatient, contemptuous "Fore!"
Till he gives it up at last and, dropping another instead,
Envies those fortunate folk, the dead, who need golf no more.
R. K. RISK.
July 12, 1911.