In the full height and glory of the year,
When husbandmen are housing golden sheaves,
Before the jealous frost has come to shear
From the bright woodland its reluctant leaves,
I pass within a gateway, where the trees,
Tall, stately, multi-coloured, manifold,
Draw the eye on as to some Chersonese,
Spanning the pathway with their arch of gold.
A river sings and loiters through the grass,
Girdling a pleasance scythed and trimly shorn;
And here I watch men vanish and repass
To the last hour of eve from early morn;
Dryads peer out at them, and goat-foot Pan
Plays on his pipe to their unheeding ears;
They pass, like pilgrims in a caravan,
Towards some Mecca in the far-off years.
Blind to the woodland's autumn livery,
Blind to the emerald pathway that they tread,
Deaf to the river's low-pitched lullaby,
Their limbs are quick and yet their souls are dead;
Nothing to them the song of any bird,
For them in vain were horns of Elfland wound,
Blind, deaf and stockfish-mute; for, in a word,
They are engaged upon a Medal Round.
Making an anxious torment of a game
Whose humours now intrigue them not at all,
They chase the flying wraith of printed fame,
With card and pencil arithmetical;
With features pinched into a painful frown
Looming misfortunes they anticipate,
Or, as the fatal record is set down,
Brood darkly on a detrimental 8.
These are in thrall to Satan, who devised
Pencil and card to tempt weak men to sin,
Whereby their prowess might be advertised--
Say, 37 Out and 40 In;
Rarely does any victim break his chains
And from his nape the lethal burden doff--
The man with medal virus in his veins
Seldom outlives it and gets back to Golf.
R. K. RISK.
Oct. 2, 1912.