"Oh! put me on your waiting list
I'll be a golfer if I may
And learn the joys too long I've missed
Before I get too old to play!"
They gave him on the list a place
And year by year they let him wait,
For golfers are a long-lived race
And very seldom emigrate.
When, after many weary years,
He reached the top his sponsor said,
"The friend (excuse these natural tears)
Whom I proposed has long been dead."
And when at last in Charon's wherry,
It was the sponsor's turn to stand
His friend came down to meet the ferry
A phantom niblick in his hand.
"Welcome to Hades," thus the shade
In hollow-sounding accents spoke
Then spied a puff-ball and essayed
To loft it, but he muffed his stroke.
"Permit me, pray, to be your guide
Until you've learnt your way about
Our golf course is our greatest pride
Old Colonel Bogey laid it out.
"Some people say Avernus stinks
And Acheron smells like a sewer
But Fernhill golfers like our links
They find the air so fresh and pure.
"Cocytus, Styx and Phlegethon
As hazards serve extremely well,
In this particular alone,
The Lambton links are just like Hell.
"The asphodel wants cutting sadly,
The lies are wretched, more's the pity
But everything is managed badly
By that infernal Green Committee.
"Come, lay aside your shroud and pall
And play a friendly round with me."
(A Dead Sea apple was the ball,
A pinch of church-yard dust, the tee.)
He took the club of cypress wood
And smote what seemed a mighty blow,
But, though the aim was true and good
The ball remained in statu quo.
"Alack and well-a-day," he cried,
"A duffer must I ever be,
A duffer I have lived and died
A duffer through Eternity."
1905.