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To The Common Golfer

by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

My dear Common Golfer, -

The game you affect

Is a great game

Played by yourself

And all the crowned heads of Europe,

Not to mention all the fat persons who desire to bant,

All the thin persons who desire to become

Vigorous and muscular, as it were,

All the clerks who desire to pass for dukes,

And all the dukes who relish the society of clerks.

It is a great game:

The people who play it are not the fault of the game.

It is also a good game.

If I am not mistaken,

It is a game that originally came out of Scotland;

Therefore it must be a good game.

For everything that comes out of Scotland is good,

Even the Scot.

And golf being a great and good game

I do not see any tremendous reason

Why you, my dear Common Golfer,

Should not engage in it if you so choose.

On the other hand, I wish from the bottom of my heart

That you did not engage in it.

I know a bank

Whereon the wild thyme blows

(Or ought to blow):

Oft of a pleasant summer morn

Have I taken a cheap ticket

To a station which is not far from that bank,

And there (on the bank, that is to say) reclined me

What time I looked up into the blue dome,

And watched the lazy-pacing clouds,

And flicked away the midges,

And wished my name was Corydon,

And remembered bits of Keats

And bits of Herrick

And bits of business,

And so forth.

Oft, I say, have I done these things;

But of late I no longer do them,

Inasmuch as my bank

Has become (if I may so term it)

Golf-ridden.

The other day I repaired to the said bank

On rural musings bent.

What did I find?

Why, my dear old thymy bank

Was in the possession

Of half a dozen gross fellows in red coats,

Thy had pipes in their mouths,

And a jar of beer in their midst,

And they were actually talking and laughing

In the most uproarious fashion.

I heard one of them say

"Why did Arthur Bawl-Fore?"

And the others thought hard,

And trifled with their brassies and things,

And could not make answer.

O, my dear Common Golfer,

You were of that party;

You were;

You are always of such parties,

You are always sitting

On other people's thymy banks,

And saying, "Why did So-and-so so-and-so?"

And depleting village public-houses of good beer,

And turning whole village populations into caddies,

And dotting the landscape with your red coats,

And generally appropriating the fair face of Nature.

I cannot stop you, my dear Common Golfer,

I cannot, O I cannot!

Would that I could. O would that I could!

In which case, perhaps, I wouldn't.

No, my dear boy,

Rural England is yours,

Also the sea-side,

Take them, old man, take them;

I hand them over to you with the best heart in the world.

Take them - they are yours -

And excuse these tears.