Variations on a Sonnet Theme

The usual prize was offered for a sonnet containing the following lines (not necessarily consecutively or in this order): To unknown lands across the uncertain sea As Goya would have seen them, stark, remote In light companionable solitude.

I CHOSE these lines from three unpub- lished poems to see how far they would bear transplanting.. The Goya did-for those who (like Ongar and Pithecus) knew their Goya-and so did the unknown lands; but very few of the seventy-eight entries made much of companionable solitude (Iris St. Hill Mousley gets top marks here). I should have liked to print Alberick's 'Brendan the Abbot' and J. Aitken's 'Gentleman of Spain,' and a very funny entry from W. K. Holmes about sirens. Two pounds to G. W. Spence, who delivers a neat rebuke to the escapists; and a pound to. eack of the others printed.

PRIZES

(a. W. SPENCE)

A World Elsewhere

He: I'd sail from these dull shores and harbours .rude To unknown lands across the uncertain sea, Where poets bid us find reality,

And sec no more this fettered multitude. But we will not be parted by this flood; For where I go there will you follow me, And our two hearts will wander far and free, In light companionable solitude.

She: The world you try to spurn is one you fear.

Nor lofty are the thoughts that wear the coat Of high disdain; and, where you would draw near,

Figures of frenzy ever will you find,

As Goya would have seen them, stark, remote, Not people now, but phantoms of your mind.

(R. KENNARD DAVIS)

Easter Island To unknown lands across the uncertain sea Frail timbers bore them, and ancestral ghosts. Sunlight and starlight and the silvery hosts Of silent swimmers bore them company.

So, when the land they looked for loomed a-lee, And the waves heaved them on the promised coasts, They graved their Guardians at their island posts.

To show their praises to posterity.

Not in rich robes and breathing flesh, they stand As Goya would have seen them. Stark, remote, On memories unutterable they brood Over a barren, all but vacant land, While wind - borne dreams from one to another float, In light companionable solitude.

(IRIS ST. HILL MOUSLEY)

The Displaced Persons They stand apart in lonely apathy, Stateless and homeless, lost, forgotten, banned, Disowned, unwanted, spurned from land to land, Helpless to change their bitter destiny. They do not speak the language of the free; Laughter they hear but do not understand, For fear goes always with them, hand in hand, To unknown lands across the uncertain sea. Over the masthead fly the last slow gulls In light, companionable solitude. The brightness of the silver evening dulls; 1 see them, with a stoic calm endued Stand closer, huddled in the husband's coat, As Goya would have seen their), stark, remote.

(D. L. L. CLARICE)

To unknown lands across the uncertain sea I once took ship in flight of boyish thought, Borne on a brig with desperados fraught, And I the captain of their Odyssey. We scoured the pirate coast of Barbary And through the clashing rocks our passage sought : When Greeks at Troy or Rome with Carthage fought We were at hand to share the battle glee. These lands are still unknown : I know not how, As Goya would have seen them, stark, remote, To paint again their contours. Sadly now 1 seek, forgetting quite my childhood's mood, My seared imagination's antidote In light companionable solitude.