From Golf is From Satan HOME
Is It for Joy?
This sonnet’s close resemblance to Shakespeare’s Sonnet no. 9 is not reason
enough to reject it out of hand as the Bard's, but the acrostic (in the first letter of each
line) strongly suggests someone having some good fun. Know also that “golf ”
had a number of early spellings, including goff and gouf, gowf and colf.—TT


Is it for joy to wet a widow’s eye
A man at goff with friends his time consume?
More, if issueless he should hap to die,
Still and barren didst keep his widow’s womb,
He leaveth to a stranger what he made,
All things, not goffing, he acquired in life;
Kind memories he left will quickly fade,
Erased with bitter tears shed by his wife.
She held in his accounting meager worth,
Poor woman to whom goff was oft’ preferred;
E’er love was borne for him yet came no birth,
All progeny are with his corpse interred.
Reason, love, nor wisdom in him liveth,
Enseared thus, his spirit to games giveth.

Copyright 2000, TT Patterson