The Lost Ball

(A golfing rhapsody suggested by "The Lost Chord.")

Playing one day at the seaside, I was topping my balls on the tees, And the sand and the bent were littered with fragments of double D's; Piffle supreme I was playing, and varying "slice" with "pull," But I hit one ball a wallop like a kick of a Spanish bull.

It whistled its way towards Heaven in a rocket's magic flight; It cancelled the crimson sunset like the shroud of a moonless night; It knocked the paint off a rainbow and scattered the stars like bees; And sped thro' the stellar spaces as tho' it would never cease.

It looped the loop like Pegoud in parabolic curves; It was salve to my wounded feelings and balm to my ruffled nerves; It clove my opponent's gizzard like the stab of a Lascar's knife; And produced the hardest swearing I have ever heard in my life.

I have sought in the bent and the bushes that one magnificent ball; It may be Antartic crystals were broken by its fall; It may be that Death as Caddy may light on the spot it fell; I may have holed out in Heaven or find myself trapped in Hell.