TO A CLERICAL GOLFING FRIEND.
Fine is your temper as your hand-forged iron!
Even should you hack the ball from out the spherical,
Or find it near the pin with lumps of mire on,
Your language is not otherwise than clerical.
Once only, when your toe received the niblick,
The word I saw your lips frame was not biblic.
Upon the links as perfect in address
As in the pulpit, just as you are seen
In life to play according to the Book,
So too, mid all the hazards of the green,
You teach us by example not to press
And how to shun the faults of slice and hook.
Treating the ball as if it had a soul,
Imparting safe direction, you determine
How best it may keep up its given rôle;
Indeed your daily round's a model sermon.
So, till life's course is traversed, I'll await
Your well-timed counsel. If I have you by me
I'll laugh at all the baffling strokes of Fate
And lay the bogie of Despair a stymie.