RPO -- Robert Fuller Murray : The Golf-ball and the Loan

Robert Fuller Murray (1863-1894)

The Golf-ball and the Loan

AFTER LONGFELLOW

1I drove a golf-ball into the air;

2It fell to earth, I knew not where;

3For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

4Could not follow it in its flight.

5I lent five shillings to some men,

6They spent it all, I know not when,

7For who is quick enough to know

8The time in which a crown may go?

9Long, long afterward, in a whin

10I found the golf-ball, black as sin;

11But the five shillings are missing still!

12They haven't turned up, and I doubt if they will.

Notes

1] a less than good-natured take-off of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Arrow and the Song."

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: R. F. Murray, The Scarlet Gown: Being Verses by a St. Andrews Man, 2nd edn., intro. by Andrew Lang (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1909): 67. LE M9837sc Robarts Library
First publication date: 1891
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2001
Recent editing: 1:2002/10/5

Rhyme: aabb

Other poems by Robert Fuller Murray