75. 1921 April

This is a parody on Whyte Melvilles poem. Melville was a Scottish novelist but I can't find the original poem my granddad refers to but have found this !

I doubt F.A.I. wrote this himself as nothing I have found indicates he played golf!!

A Parody on Whyte Melvilles’ most beautiful poem the Place Where the Old Horse Died

I

At the bottom of the bunker where the sand is soft and deep

And each ball takes a heel mark of its own

Where the stance is loose and shifting and the face in front is steep

And you seize on your niblich with a groan

There a spot I never pass through laying safe on grass

But my heart gives a flutter and a bound

And I breathe a little word by bunkers often heard

It’s the place I spoilt my medal round

II

There’s my driver in the corner, there’s my mashie by his side

But I have often driven and I have lofted in vain

I will never win the medal I haven’t even tried

And I shall never have so good a chance again

How the ball flew off the tee I holed my first in three

How I walked as if I hardly touched the ground

The lowest score that day and only 2 to play

III

Did I heel I hardly think so

Did I slice I cannot tell

I had done the front 16 in sixty nine

I was swinging like a windmill

I was driving strong

Two hundred yards and never off the line

But I sometimes knew that my soaring spirit knew

I was just pressing a quarter of a pound

Still I played my level best and my caddy knows the rest

The place where I spoilt my medal round

IIII

I stood for half a minute as the ball rolled down the bank

Then I hacked with my niblish where it lay

But the more I smote behind it the deeper it sank

And I knew it was in there for the day

But sometimes I think (its true) that my soaring spirits knew

And dashed it in a ????? on the ground

I had played about thirteen and wasn’t on the green

And that’s how I spoilt my medal round

V

There are men good and wise who hold that in a future state

Poor fellows who where bunkered here below

Will always be on the green in two and always putting straight

Is it folly that I hope it maybe so

For if your wish to try the thrash to mortify

There is not a better method to be found

Then to play some eight or ten in a sandy bunker when

You have very nearly holed your medal round

FAI April 1921