Life, 1916-04-06 · page 43 of 80
Life — April 6, 1916 — page 43: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This poem humorously laments golf's dominance in early-20th-century leisure culture. The speaker nostalgically recounts youthful athletic pursuits—baseball, tennis, rowing, dancing, mountain climbing—before resignedly asking: "Must I be captive to Golf, at last?" The satire targets golf's obsessive grip on American society and the speaker's aging generation. The third stanza mocks golf equipment itself, describing clubs with unfamiliar names ("Niblick," "Putter," "Brassie") as resembling ancient weapons, suggesting the sport's strange, quasi-martial formality. The *envoi* (closing stanza) uses biblical allusion—Samuel answering Saul's call—to treat golf addiction almost religiously, as an inescapable fate. The poem gently ridicules both golf's trendiness among the elite and the resigned acceptance of middle-aged men surrendering to its popularity, even when they prefer livelier sports.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
~ PomnirZAy ETE: 1S WBICOL Ballade of Sport O for the games of a younger day! Indoor and outdoor, I played them all: Baseball and football, perchance croquet; Hockey in winter, lacrosse in fall. Various weapons that drive the ball Strengthened my arms in the golden Past. Tell me! O freckle-faced urchin small, Must I be captive to Golf, at last? Tennis on asphalt or turf or clay, Rowing, or sailing the white-winged yawl, Bowling along on the smooth highway, Climbing the scarp of the mountain wall, Footing the dance in the festal hall, Fighting the waves and the stormy blast,— Such were the pleasures I now recall. Must I be captive to Golf, at last? Here is a bag o’ the canvas gray, Crowded with clubs—and their names appall!— “Niblick” and “ Putter” and “ Brassie "—they Look like the arms of an ancient Gaul. Might not a man that is stout and tall View such burglarious tools aghast? Must I resign me to these, withal? Must I be captive to Golf, at last? Envoi “ Caddie! Stop swinging that cross-eyed maul! Answer, as Samuel from the Vast Answered, prophetic, the cry of Saul: “Must I be captive to Golf, at last?”