C o mpetition

No. 1270: Who and when?

Set by Japistos: To offer you all a rest and some good entertainment I print below a remarkable poem I have discovered. A hef- ty reward will be given to anyone who can tell me the name of the author, and prize money will be divided among those who can guess the date of composition to within three years. Entries to 'Competition No. 1270' by 3 June.

The report on Competition No. 1267, together with the prizewinning entries, will appear in next week's issue.

A Dirty Night on the Fastnet Rock

Oh Flutes! the night came on, The grizzly, guzzling, gulping night, And oh Great Scott what mud, what rain, what scrunch!

The rain came down in streams 'Twas not the spitting, cat-like rain, oh no! - It was the swilling, swelching, Swithian rain That makes the new rags and the old alike smell wet, The sousing, duck-loved rain.

The wind grew worse; oh slithering snow- shoes how it squelched!

It screeched around the lighthouse like some green-eyed fiend - Great Scotland Yard what shrieks! The one-stringed fiddle or the untuned flute were music to those shrieks; The swinging, swelching, slobbering waves came lamming on the rocks, The gulching, sea-green waves.

And as I looked, I saw an awful distant sky-high wave,

Land's End it was a wave!

Afar it seemed an oily, bloated bulging wave, but near It was a swearing, oathing, spiteful wave! buzzing along, Great Scott! it nears the rock, The many-cornered, wave-dividing rock.

It humped itself upon its strong hind legs and then it burst, It more than burst, it bust, it simply bashed, It lit upon the blistered rock and swept away the lighthouse lamp, The beastly oily lighthouse lamp.

Oh Hares! Oh Jumping Crimes. - Oh shattering chandeliers and fizzing squish!

Oh creeping crocodiles and crippled crabs!

It gulched and slooched around the scraggy lighthouse rock, The well-pecked lobster rock.

Oh Flutes! the night came on - The grizzly, grimy, black-eyed night, a night that gloried in being black. Mytooth-gnawed pen can ill describe the inky darkness of that congealed black. Suffice to say the unwashed negro or the Patagonian slug Would shine like muzzled virtue next that black.

But hold! what is that shadowy form? Oh scootling wizards! Can I see aright?

A ship! An uncouth, ghastly, scarecrow ship! With fear I shrink away, and like the unspun spinning top I hold my breath.

Oh Snakes! she nears the rock, The many-cornered, wave-dividing rock - Oh splathering toads! I see the masts and gear, The spinning wheel, the death's head on the prow. I see the horror-stricken victims clinging to the ropes, A ghastly lot, unshaven, a filthy, beastly-looking crew, Huddled upon an unscrubbed, an unswabbed and unsqueegeed deck - Oh one-eyed Crusoe let me die unknown, A isle,

cod-fish on some Puffin's le

But letnever gaze again on such a sight!

On came the humping bulging waves Bearing their wobbling craft, The hog-backed, quivering, floundering craft.

Oh staggering jelly how she reels, Oh shivering custard and oh writhing eels, Oh bandaged thunder and oh lightning greased, Oh palsied, lurching, epileptic funk, With one last agonising buck-jump leap She's whizzed a splathered wreck upon the rock And sunk! A Boss-Eyed Shaker, yet a beastly wave.