Yet never feel the heat or suffer sway,
Is to behold a lover's gifted sight
And grasp the sun's new warmth at start of day.
Do you call to me, in tones as dark as ill?
For so I ne'er shall think of petty deeds
Whose want doth lack in men of newborn skill
And, making all, is twice when it exceeds.
We both shall fight, yet never utter more.
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
A cankerseed whose scent it shall abhor
Which, sensing this, brings peace to our new state.
You should not chill nor warm nor temper me,
Lest I may freeze and, freezing, burn not thee.
Grumio et al.
This sonnet was apparently created in the same way as the King James Bible, by a group of people working together, though in this case they were not “certain learned men … the best biblical scholars and linguists of their day”, but rather some of the habitués of Reginald’s Club in Frith Street, Soho, who took it in turns to compose a line; the eleventh and its neologism was by their doyen, Grumio himself. The result of their labours is not to be compared with the KJB—for one thing, it’s much shorter—but has a macabre charm of its own.