The Links of Love

The Links of Love

Original Text
Owen Seaman, The Battle of the Bays )London: The Bodley Head, 1896): 69-70. OCLC Id: 1822279. Internet Archive.
1My heart is like a driver-club,
2    That heaves the pellet hard and straight,
3That carries every let and rub,
4    The whole performance really great;
5My heart is like a bulger-head,
6    That whiffles on the wily tee,
7Because my love has kindly said
8    She'll halve the round of life with me.
9My heart is also like a cleek,
10    Resembling most the mashie sort,
11That spanks the object, so to speak,
12    Across the sandy bar to port;
13And hers is like a putting-green,
14    The haven where I boast to be,
15For she assures me she is keen
16    To halve the round of life with me.
17Raise me a bunker, if you can,
18    That beetles o'er a deadly ditch,
19Where any but the bogey-man
20    Is practically bound to pitch;
21Plant me beneath a hedge of thorn,
22    Or up a figurative tree,
23What matter, when my love has sworn
24    To halve the round of life with me?

Notes

2] pellet: golf-ball. Back to Line
3] "That passes over every obstruction and unevenness of the ground." Back to Line
5] bulger-head: "club with the round [convex] face which was designed as an aid to straightness of hitting" (OED, "bulger," 2, 1907 quotation). Back to Line
6] whiffles: drives with a puff of air. Back to Line
8] halve: have the same score. round: nine or eighteen holes of golf. Back to Line
9] cleek: "iron-headed club with a straight, narrow face and a long shaft" (OED). Back to Line
10] mashie: mid-iron or 5-iron, used for medium carry. Back to Line
12] sandy bar: bunker. Back to Line
18] beetles: hangs perilously. Back to Line
19] bogey-man: golfer who routinely scores the number of strokes needed to make par for his handicap. (Not, as today, the golfer who can score one over par.) Back to Line
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011
Rhyme
ababcdcd
Form
octaves