No. 1270: The winners

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were challenged to name the author and approx- imate year of composition of the poem 'A Dirty Night on the Fastnet Rock'.

The answer, which it was hardly fair to expect you to deduce or know, is Master (later the Reverend) William Packenham- Walsh, aged 12, probably in 1880. The vast majority of you plumped for the wrong century, possibly fooled by the modern- sounding 'squeegee', which my dictionary gives as occurring as early as 1867, and your most popular putative author was P. G. Wodehouse. The dear old bean would be chuffed if he knew. The poem ap- peared in print in the LAMDA Anthology of Verse and Prose, published by the Bodley Head in 1963. When it comes to prizes, Martyn Skinner earns £15 for his near-miss 'the Revd Ignotus, aged 13, c 1880', and Frederic Stockdale gets a fiver for being the only other person to guess the date correctly to within ten years.

No. 1269: The winners

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for a poem entitled 'The Meditations of a Lighthouse' either in their own right or in the persona of a girl at Grangewood School.

There's room only for especially warm commendations to the losers by a whisker, George Moor, 0. Banfield, N. J. Warbur- ton, Joyce Johnson and Gerry Hamill, and congratulations to the winners, who get £10 each. Here they are, Grangewood girls first, headed by Flora Melpomene McGonagall: Here stand 1 aloft above the spray and the spume While all around the savage waves do vainly froth and fume, Guarding all those in range of the guerdon of my light

Spectator 11 June 1983 And indeed my renowned name of Ed- From snare of shoal and shipwreck's blight; dystone

Is very widely — you might almost say. universally — known;

prevent

For all year long I try to typhoon and the hurricane gallant sailor's (Both of which are every Kane) From being a further stocker Of Davy Jones's already bulging locker. But I have yet one wish and it is very, emphatic;

And that is, that I was not always so static;

For if I had only been mobile I could have

saved the Titanic iceberg so From falling victim to that

satanic, of Which resulted in exactly 1503 persons both sexes being drowned - as That is, buried beneath the sea and not, is usual, beneath the ground. (Jon Fernside) Oh, I'm a bright lighthouse, A shine in the night house, A fresh-painted white house; Pure as milk from the dairy, Like the Whitehouse called Mary

I show up for miles.

I warn the unwary Of Nature's grim wiles.

When black clouds embrace me, When stormy winds face me And try to displace me, I hold to my own. On a rock for foundation,

I offer salvation

With illumination,

A sermon in stone. (0. smith) Far out here I stand,

On this rock, just me; No part of the land, Not quite of the sea.

Long years I have stood, As a lighthouse should, Seeing none be wrecked. Bright, alone, erect, Though I seem to shine, Shedding hope and light, Little cheer is mine On this blighted site; For this is my grouse: I am cursed by fate, Which says no lighthouse May enjoy a mate. (Edward Samson) At Alexandria Pharos shone Upon the old Egyptian scene; It must have seen some goings-on

When Cleopatra was their queen.

I've little to illuminate In this place save for miles of water; I did once see a Second Mate Lay hands upon a Captain's daughter.

A phallic symbol has his pride;

I only wish that I could see

What happens on the landward side, But they have screened it off from me. On-off, on-off, four times a minute I turn my beam on wave and sand;

I'd give the sea and all that's in it

To turn it on the wicked land.

(Paul Griffin)

the

verY verY

To turn it on the wicked land.

(Paul Griffin)