The Lost Ball

The Lost Ball (By Thomas Kettle)

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Thomas M Kettle

Poems & Parodies By T.M.Kettle Published on his death in 1916

This was understood to have been penned in Bettystown golf links where a copy was recently presented by J.B.Lyons the author's biographer.

(A golfing rhapsody suggested by "The Last 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 the 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 Pégoud in para-

bolic 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 bushes

that one magnificent ball;

It maybe Antartic crystals were broken

by it's fall;

It maybe that Death as Caddy may light

on the spot it fell;

I may have holed out in Heaven or find

myself trapped in Hell.